The TechCrawl is a simple concept: each presenting company gives visitors to their booth a 60 second pitch about their product.

About 40 startup companies showed up Thursday night in Baltimore to pitch at the second annual TechCrawl East -- that's about twice as many as last year.

It was at a great location, by the way: the first floor of the new Morgan Stanley building overlooking the Inner Harbor.

Of the 40, roughly half of them came from out of state, from New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and even New Mexico. (The NM firm was a Web search company called Deep Web Technologies.)

I talked with a bunch of them, though not anywhere near 40.

Some local companies that were there:

* Localist -- a powerful platform for event management

* Deconstruct Media -- a bunch of former Advertising.com execs who are launching a self-service ad publishing service.

* Direct Dimensions -- super-cool 3D imaging through its ShapeShot technology.

* ipiqi -- a new kind of online forum.

* ViaPlace -- a geo-mobile product solution sold to companies and orgs that want a robust presence on the mobile Web. Johns Hopkins University will soon be debuting a mobile Web app with ViaPlace technology.

* Common Curriculum -- makes software that helps organizations put their curricula online.

* PrestoSports -- of Rockville, creates sports websites for college sports programs. Over 250 to date.

I also spoke with execs from several out-of-Baltimore locales, including:

* Deep Web Technologies -- link above.

* IMLeagues -- a social network for college intramural teams based in North Carolina.

* HopStop -- of New York, provides door-to-door mass transit and walking directions in 20 US markets, including Baltimore.

* Printed Piece -- of Boston; an online social community for graphic designers and print shops.

* CloudSpree -- of Washington DC; enables researchers to tap into the computer power of their social network, i.e. Facebook friends, for distributed computing resources.