On Monday, July 14th 2025, I hosted a mini-workshop on homomorphic encryption at Google’s Portland, Oregon office.
Though Portland is a small city, it’s becoming a hub for homomorphic encryption. Intel and Google both have a presence here, as well as the hardware startup Niobium, and a few individuals from other companies who happen to be based here.
Since I had been having lunch with various subsets of the community, I figured it was about time to get us all in a room together.
About 18 people attended. In the interest of fostering community, I encouraged people to give informal, even “spicy” talks, nothing was recorded, and there were extended breaks for discussion.
I wanted an environment where we could be open about our concerns, admit to things we don’t know, and express burgeoning or unrefined opinions. Despite competition among companies, we’re all on the same team in the broader effort to make privacy practical.
Since we only had six talks, after lunch we switched to a hackathon for the HEIR compiler, and ended the day with a happy hour.
I hope to do this again next year, around the same time. So if you’re interested in joining and you live close to Portland, let me know and I can put you on the list.
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