About this Blog
The Interface of Place is a personal blog exploring the impact of digital technology on how destinations are managed, marketed, and experienced. It focuses on the practical intersection of platforms, data, strategy, and place—where ambition meets operational reality.
I write from the perspective of a senior technologist embedded within a Destination Marketing Organization—a role that remains relatively unusual in the industry. With limited internal resources and broad mandates (see my DMO Venn diagram), many organizations turn to external partners for technological expertise. This blog exists to complement that ecosystem with an internal, practitioner-led viewpoint—grounded in operational reality, tested against real constraints, and intentionally resistant to hype-fueled visions of the future that outpace practical value.
If the medium is indeed the message, then this is a nostalgic throwback to a hopeful, misty-eyed web 1.0, when the free sharing of knowledge and experience in the marketplace of ideas would lead inevitably to a better world.
By day, I work for Travel Portland, a job I adore. The views expressed here, however, are entirely my own and may not accord with those of my employer.
About the Author
My name is Richard Tammar, and my earliest brush with the tourist economy came in 1985, when my family moved down from London to Lewes to open a bed and breakfast.
A random sequence of events brought me to employment at with the University of Colorado’s Webworks team in 1998, where I helped build some of the earliest distance learning websites. Since anyone with a heartbeat and HTML could land a job during the dotcom bubble, these nascent skills found me leading web development for a public university, a Fortune 500 technology company and a global non-profit, before finding my way into destination management in 2012.
Along the way, I received a Master’s Degree in Women’s Studies, taught third grade, moonlit as a wedding photographer and published the region’s most popular dad blog, Things to do in Portland with Children.
In my spare time, I’m a keen traveler, cook and board gamer. My novel, The Marmalade Shore, has a cult following.