It was a grey drizzly day in December, and the schedulers were maximizing throughput, totally. The New Stack founder Alex Williams, his forehead nuzzled into his trademark fedora in an effort to escape the harsh florescent lights, slipped quickly through the glass doors of the Hilton, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of staticky dust from the light-rail-inlaid streets of Portland, Oregon entering along with him.

The lobby smelt of rain-dampened valet parking mats and savoy cabbage rolls with eggplant, zucchini and jicama in a lemon balm broth. At one end of the hallway a coloured poster advertising the pancake breakfast that had been served and broken down was turned in its now-uselessness to face the wall. Dozens of polished escalators teemed with many of the several-hundred Node.js Interactive 2015 attendees, relieved that the node.js and io.js projects had resolved their differences, and the electric currents sizzled with the release of Node.js v4.0.0.

From inside a partitioned conference room a feline voice was reading out data freshly mined with open source modules. Outside, even through the thick dark wood paneling, could be heard the townsfolk celebrating the Timbers MLS Championship. At the center of an elegant foyer during the peak of an inter-session break Williams met up with his subjects: the blond-bearded Oregon native Max Ogden, the GitHub developer and designer Jessica Lord of the Warner Robins, Georgia Lords, and Carter Thaxton VP Technology of Voicebox Karaoke Lounge.

Along a mossy path beside a still-affordable southeast craftsman home of deceptive square footage, a neighborhood cat sashays past a streaming HD camera toward a bowl of artisan chow. A macabre grin passed across Williams’ face. “Portnodia,” he thought, to himself at first; later he would do so out loud. But now, in a silent and ceremonious sort of way, he unveiled a comically oversized podcasting microphone and presented it to the group, meeting each in turn with his piercing journalistic stare. With a brush of his mouse finger he powered-up some solid-state storage and hit the “record” button, so as to capture this 73rd episode of The New Stack Analysts.