I was honored to have been approached by Concordia University in Portland to speak about Our Portland Story at the upcoming TEDx Concordia Portland event. TEDx is an independently organized TED event, and is officially set for May 14, 2011. The event theme is “think.inspire.go”, highlighting the innovative thinking that makes Portland unique.

The event will showcase 18-20 other inspiring speakers of notable status within their respective fields, including sustainability, food cart culture, alternative models of education, voluntary simplicity, peace activism and much more.

Fellow speakers include Rep. Jefferson Smith, founder of the Oregon Bus Project, Neal Keny-Guyer, CEO of Mercy Corps, Kelley Roy, author of Cartopia: Portland’s Food Cart Revolution, Jeff Mapes, author of Pedaling Revolution and political writer for The Oregonian, Polly Bangs, founder of Impact Northwest Urban Opportunities and many more. The full line-up of speakers can be viewed at the event website www.TEDxConcordiaUPortland.com.

The all-day conference includes three sessions of talks, performances, breakfast, lunch and plenty of opportunities for dynamic conversation. Buy tickets now!

To find out more about the national TED conferences: www.TED.com

See you there!

This past Thursday, November 4th, Our Portland Story celebrated its second event, an art opening and reading at Backspace - 115 Northwest 5th Avenue. The gallery curator at that venue chose 17 pages from the book to display on the wall for the month of November. The show opened as part of the First Thursday Art Walk, and featured readings from the book by authors: Chris Kruell, Steve Snell, Amber Keyser, Miriam Feder, Ali McCart, Merrick Monroe, Molly Wolverton, Gerry Blakney on behalf of Vincent Green, and Alex Rauch.

If you missed the event, you still have the whole month of November to stop by, see the show, buy the book and a cup of coffee while you are at it!

BIG THANKS to Backspace for hosting the space; to Katayama Framing and New Belgium Brewing for donations!

Our Portland Story has been pounding the pavement recently. We’ve taken the book out of our dusty hallway and to the streets in search of some new homes. Luckily, we have met some nice folks who are excited to carry Our Portland Story Volume One. You can now find copies at Reading Frenzy, Floating World Comics, Microcosm, Tender Loving Empire, Monograph Bookwerks, Rad Summer, Filter Talent and Land. Coming soon to Powell’s Books. These are some of our favorite stores in Portland and there is no doubt you will find many other treasures in these local shops.

Here is a listing with addresses:

Reading Frenzy
921 SW Oak St
Portland, OR 97205-2804

Floating World Comics
20 NW 5th Ave #101
Portland, OR 97209

Microcosm
636 SE 11th Ave
Portland, OR 97214

Tender Loving Empire
412 SW 10th Ave
Portland, OR 97205

Monograph Bookwerks
5005 NE 27th Ave
Portland, OR 97211

Rad Summer
2742 E Burnside
Portland, OR 97214

Land
3925 N Mississippi Ave
Portland, OR 97227

Filter Talent
733 NW Everett St
Portland, OR 97209

If you are a retailer and wish to carry Our Portland Story, let me know at melissa@ourportlandstory.com.

Check out the other two segments on the Our Portland Story YouTube Channel.

Wordstock This Weekend

Our Portland Story Volume One will be available for sale at the Wordstock Book Fair this Saturday and Sunday – October 9th and 10th at the Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE MLK Jr. Blvd from 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Find the book at the p:ear booth. p:ear is an organization that  creatively mentors homeless street youth, and I have personally been volunteering with them for two years. The book will be on sale for $28, cash or check only, and $6 from every book sold will go directly to p:ear. I will be volunteering at the booth personally from 2:00-6:00 on Saturday.

Delivery by Bike

Our Portland Story is offering free bike delivery of books to the inner Portland Metro area for those who enter “PDX Bike Delivery” in the city field when purchasing books online. We will bike deliver the books right to your door within a week. We thought this would be a fun way to get some exercise, and create a fun promo!

Art Opening and Readings at Backspace in November

We are also happy to announce a save the date notice for our second event, an art show and reading event at Backspace – 115 NW 5th Ave. The fine folks at Backspace have graciously offered their gallery space for the month of November. The curator will be choosing pages from the book that we will have enlarged, printed, framed and displayed in the gallery. The gallery will officially open on November 4th, in a First Thursday evening event party. That night we will have readings, music, drinks, etc. I will notify you if you are an author or designer whose page is chosen to be displayed. Until then, save the date!

The CW’s TV show, Outlook Portland, asked Our Portland Story to appear as a guest to talk about the book, the people and the process. I asked OPS author, Paul Sorenson and designer, Megan Clark to join me in the interview. The taping went very well, and I am happy to announce that the segment will air on October 17th, 2010 at 6:30 am on the CW. If you miss it then, it will be available online as well, and I will post when it goes up. The interview featured readings from Paul’s page along with Aimee Heigold’s story, and the topics and design of the pages by Alice Gustafson and Molly Wolverton were discussed among other mentions. Thanks to the folks at Outlook Portland for the opportunity!

If you missed out on the fun, don’t fret. You can buy the book online from the “Shop” tab above, or stay tuned as we get more events and readings on the calendar.

More photos from the event can be found on the facebook page or flickr.

Thanks to DJ Ryan Scheel, my wonderful group of volunteer friends, and Mississippi Studios for making the event a success!