A friend once told me that whenever you want to get something done, you ought to ask a busy person. I’m pretty sure I was also the person he was asking about how to get something done.  Over the last two months, I’d pretty much decided against anything else that vaguely smelled like YASP – yet another side project. Then Rick Turoczy approached me about mentoring for PIE, and I was so excited about the opportunity that I promptly had YAYASP.

Applications for PIE close on August 1, 2011. If you’re wondering what PIE is and why you should care, here’s more from Rick:

http://piepdx.com
What’s PIE you ask? Well, let us tell you.

Since August of 2009, PIE has been home to more than 20 startups, including Urban Airship, Bac’n, PHP Fog, BankSimple, Geoloqi, VodPod, and COLOURlovers, among others. We hosted a number of tech events, including the DjangoCon 2009 Hackathon, WhereCamp PDX Hackathon, GeolQ Hackathon, Portland CivicApps Hackathon, and many more.

What sets us apart from our inaugural year is we now have
several strong brands collaborating with PIE, including
Nike, Target and Coca-Cola, as we embark on our first
brand-focused experiment in 2011. The brands provide five
cross-disciplinary mentors during the 3-month period, who
collaborate with the startups, provide knowledge share and
explore new business challenges and opportunities.

In 2011, we’re aiming to help brands find unexpected solutions,
accelerate new business and keep innovation at the forefront
of what we do. PIE’s ability to curate technology and
innovation, combined with W+K’s connection to brands and
popular culture, should produce some interesting results
in this next round.

We’d love to have you be a part of this. Join us. And make it.

I’m thrilled to be joining this world-class team of mentors and working with entrepreneurs in Portland. Don’t be shy, start working on that application now!