Silicon Forest blog

The @techoregon says this year’s Sam Blackman Award winner is Peggy Miller, CEO of Tigard defense contractor Pacific Star Communications.

Portland’s latest TechTown video highlights firms’ efforts to promote diversity. bit.ly/37oOLc1

“Our ambitions have just never been greater,” CEO Bob Swan told investment analysts Thursday. “We realize it’s an increasingly competitive world and we feel like we’re well positioned to deal with it.” bit.ly/37oZXoX

A man fired from a McMinnville-based digital marketing company was sentenced Wednesday to a year and a day in federal prison for launching a cyberattack against his former employer. by @maxoregonian bit.ly/2Rmk5me

Bill Staples is a former Adobe and Microsoft cloud computing executive. He lives in Utah and will split his time between his home there, the Portland office and other New Relic sites. bit.ly/361HIEq

Every Democratic member of the House voted in favor, plus 34 Republicans — including Walden and Herrera Beutler. Speaking on the House floor ahead of the vote, Rep. Bonamici highlighted age discrimination in Oregon’s tech industry.

Oregon entrepreneurs raised nearly $700 million last year, the most since the dot-com era. Nearly half of that haul went to just one company, though. The overall number of companies funded fell sharply. bit.ly/35Y9uly

A federal age-discrimination investigation into Intel’s 2015 & 2016 layoffs has dragged on for years. Lax enforcement and an unusually high bar to prove age discrimination makes older workers uniquely vulnerable in the workplace. bit.ly/2RtOO13

Portland AR startup @streem_pro sold Thursday to Memphis-based Frontdoor. bit.ly/2RmCgsj

HP and Xerox are among the Silicon Forest’s largest technology employers. bit.ly/2riGDJG

*needs

“Any large, successful company need to have a toe in the entrepreneurial space,” said Puppet CEO @ytechdata bit.ly/2QB0T42

Clark County laser manufacturing @nLIGHTCorp is buying a Colorado company, Nutronics, that makes complementary technology. nLight says it expects the acquisition will generate $25m-$40m in revenue next year. bit.ly/2CMaihc

Tektronix, godfather to the Silicon Forest, is cutting more jobs. bit.ly/2ClOR6f

Former TriQuint and Lattice Semi VP Sean Riley is the new CEO of Portland wireless technology startup @RigadoInc. Riley previously spent 13 years at Intel.

Former Janrain CEO @jimkaskade has been named CEO of a Foster City company, Conversica, “the leader in intelligent virtual assistants for customer engagement.” (Janrain sold to Akamai in January.)

Tuesday’s funding makes Vacasa the state’s best chance to develop a new, homegrown company to help anchor Oregon’s economy and to nurture a new generation of employees and executives to lead future businesses. bit.ly/2ow3Bw8

The godfather of Oregon’s tech industry cut 200 jobs last summer as sales slowed.

Why would Oregon’s small towns hand out hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to big tech companies like Amazon? The way they see it, there’s no good alternative. bit.ly/347Jeoh

McAfee said in a written statement that it “must balance the needs of the business with those of our workforce.” bit.ly/2pJ7zSe