Googling Kadri (Jack Bog's Blog)

Today's Trib reports that Sal Kadri, CEO of a Portland company called ValueCAD, is Mayor Tom Potter's third appointee to the board of the Portland Development Commission. Kadri will be sworn in August 1, giving Potter three of the five votes on the PDC board. The other two Potterites on the panel are Bertha Ferrán, who is already serving; and Mark Rosenbaum, who I believe will be installed there shortly. All are to serve three-year terms. The two holdovers from the Katz days are Doug Blomgren and Eric Parsons.

The official announcement about Kadri is here, but before reading it I thought I'd try to see what tidbits a quick trip around the 'net looking for Kadri might turn up. His company's site is here. It's into CAFM, CAD, and GIS, which is all gibberish to me. According to the Portland Business Journal, the company is "an information technology and computer-aided drafting contractor." Apparently it makes "raster images" -- again, I have no clue. It sounds like high-tech maps. One of their ads promises, "We make your CAD data GIS ready." O.k....

ValueCAD got into a bit of a flap over outsourcing about a year ago; at that time, it reportedly had 36 employees in the United States and 10 in India. The company's address is listed as over at SE 26th and Ankeny -- which would put it a stone's throw from Esparza's.

ValueCAD does a lot of government contracting, including some with the City of Portland, and it got into a dispute with the USDA a few years back. In 1998, it was written up in a PGE brochure after it installed some solar power technology on its building in Portland. This site explains:

Another system, not far away, provides PV power to the Portland-based firm ValueCAD. PGE originally thought to install rooftop panels, as at The Nature Conservancy, but a structural analysis of the building scotched that plan. Instead, the pair of 250-watt panels are mounted, awning-style, at a 45-degree angle on the building's south-facing exterior wall. These polycrystalline silicon panels, also made by Solarex, were actually set up at the White House for Christmas in 1996, according to Boleyn. PGE paid $1,500 for each panel.

Kadri's full first name is Salahuddin. He is a minority contractor who has been honored for advocating employment of disabled people. He is listed as an honorary director of the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs. ValueCAD shows up on a directory of Muslim businesses.

To me, Kadri and the two other new PDC directors are the faces of long-overdue change at that agency. I wish them luck.

Ferrán, Rosenbaum.

Comments (10)

"Rasterizing" is converting vector graphics to bitmaps. Vector graphics are mathmatical, whereas bitmaps are pixalized approximations. For shorthand sake, think of it as converting digital to analog, although that's an imprecise definition.

Not that any of that has any bearing on qualifications to run or oversee PDC.

Posted by jaybird | June 21, 2005 9:00 PM

Just to add to the geekness, rasterizing is actually more like going from analog to digital. Vectors are pur direction and magnitude while raster is the digitization of the information into discrete pixels on a screen.

There are a few reasons I went into patent law.

Posted by hilsy | June 21, 2005 10:00 PM

I said that saying one was digital and the other analog was imprecise. But you can't get around the fact that vectors, like digital, are mathmatically based, and that bitmaps render color by successive approximation, pixle by pixle, which is much more of an analog.

Posted by jay bird | June 21, 2005 10:55 PM

Great - One more guy who derives a lot of his income from the CoP sitting on the PDC board. I wonder which way his votes will go?

Posted by Steve | June 22, 2005 7:37 AM

I'm going with hilsy on this one. What's the only way to represent a real sine wav? On an analog record. What happens when you make it digital? You get a pixellated representation.

Digital data is usually all about quantized packets of data. Analog data can be as precise as you can make it.

Yay for pointless arguing over metaphors!

Posted by no one in particular | June 22, 2005 8:18 AM

Great Esparza post.

I'd love to see Joe sitting on the PDC Board (so long as it wouldn't interfere with the production of Oregon Trail enchiladas).

Posted by panchopdx | June 22, 2005 9:32 AM

Steve, I don't think ValueCAD does too much of its business with the City of Portland. It looks like it has plenty of other clients.

Posted by Jack Bog | June 22, 2005 10:36 AM

I don't think ValueCAD does too much of its business with the City of Portland.

Mr Bog - I understand, but I think this position needs to have the morals of Caesar's wife. Disinterest would for once be a desired trait. It just seems a lot of the log-rolling in city government is this kind of vote for this and I'll get you this contract.

Posted by Steve | June 24, 2005 9:20 AM

WOW...CAFM is the tracking of facilities and real estate, GIS is tracking all sorts of things... that is a heck of a way to get in the door...we are talking a muti-million dollar contract if ValueCAD gets to handle the city of Portland. Aren't there rules against this kind of thing?

Posted by nik | July 1, 2005 10:03 AM

2000 -Commissioner Dan Saltzman

*109 Authorize a contract with ValueCAD for electronic sewer easement mapping services and provide for payment (Ordinance)

CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

Posted by nik | July 1, 2005 10:20 AM

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Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Googling Kadri

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