There's definitely increased activity, but I think it falls short of being a scene (I say this as someone looking on from Hillsboro). I guess I'm looking for a larger VC to set up shop, rather than visit from somewhere else.

OT, and completely uninformed question: how's the scene in recruiting straight from Portland State University?

(I ask out of idle curiosity, because I once had the opportunity to do an MS in CS there a while (6 years) back, and I passed up because I couldn't take on the financial burden - please drop me an email if you feel this might threadjack the discussion here.)

We haven't tried recruiting from PSU ourselves, but we probably should. Galois (http://corp.galois.com/) recruits students from PSU's CS program. My colleagues from PSU's mathematics dept have also been a pleasure to work with.

Yup, Galois is the most obvious direct recruiter from PSU, but there are others, to be sure, but not enough. I've got a few friends in the MS and PHd programs at PSU and they certainly don't have people beating down their doors, I'm sorry to say. It would certainly be good to see more direct recruiting and internship opportunities opening up.

We (Puppet Labs) take interns from PSU and have hired pro services engineers from there.

I know Intel recruits heavily out of PSU.