User:Turoczy
- Rick Turoczy has been working with Portland high-tech startups for 15 years. Now, he's simply trying to track them.
- Below is a profile of and interview with Rick Turoczy by Amber Case.
Lover of language and connector of dots
Rick Turoczy has worked in Portland high-tech marketing communications roles for more than a dozen years, focusing on making the obtuse and arcane seem—well—simple. His corporate-side stints have included work for companies like MedicaLogic, ProSight, and Digimarc.
But he has spent some time on the other side of the desk, as well. And, has run his own consulting gig, Return, since 2006.
Rick began programming on a “cutting edge” TRS-80 in 1979 and has continued to feed a relentless addiction to technology, ever since. Close friends, in fact, have often heard him utter, “I coded the coolest Pac-Man game in BASIC this one time…”
In high school, Rick was lucky enough to get into desktop publishing on this wacky new platform called the “Apple Macintosh”. (But he may have actually logged more hours playing “Dark Castle.”) He was a heavy VAX/VMS, TELNET, and PINE user in college. And one of the first owners of the Apple Macintosh LCIII, affectionately dubbed “the pizza box.” He bought his first URL, hypocritical.com, nearly a decade ago.
Rick graduated from Whitman College in 1993 with a BA in English that included a heavy focus on often-inebriated Catholic southern authors—with a minor in inebriated authors from all over the world.
He lives in southwest Portland (Garden Home area) with his wife, Multnomah County children’s librarian Erica Moore, and his two sons, Miles and Eames.
What are you up to?
I’ve always got a few side projects going. But the one of which I’m most proud, currently, is Silicon Florist, a blog that covers the small startups, blogs, and events here in Portland and the Silicon Forest.
By and large, these folks don’t generally get the recognition that they deserve. So, I try to shed a little light on what they’re doing. And I hope to give other folks—whether they live in Portland or not—an idea of the sheer volume of activity happening here in town. There really is a bunch of cool stuff happening right here in our own backyard.
And that’s what’s so invigorating about writing the Silicon Florist. I get to talk to these people about what they’re doing. Not what they do for a living. But what they do on the side because they’re passionate about it. Because they believe in what they’re doing and the problems they’re solving. And what they not-so-secretly hope may be their chance to get to do something they love while earning a living at the same time.
Connect with Rick
- Rick's
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