Luis Elizondo (right) and John Robert (left) haven't worked in the cargo shipping industry before, but they've studied it feverishly for the past four years. And they think they've come up with a game-changing idea.

Their thinking: Why not look at cargo ships the way we look at rail cars and tractor trailers? Rail cars get decoupled from their engines and trailers get decoupled from the tractors that pull them. Why can't ships' hulls -- in a similar fashion -- be decoupled from the superstructures (wheelhouses) that house the crew?

Their vision is a port that cuts down dramatically on wait times for ships to unload their cargo, and is turning around crew quickly and putting ships out to sail in a matter of hours, not days.

Watch a video animation of their idea here.

This year, Elizondo got a patent for the idea, and he and Robert formed a company called Never Ship Empty. They're about to start pitching it to leaders in the industry. And they're embarking on a feasibility study with the University of Houston to test out how efficient the new process could be for a port.

They'll have to persuade a lot of skeptics. But if the numbers and efficiencies hold up, we may be looking at a possible new way that the cargo shipping industry can go about its business -- thanks to these two guys from Maryland and their audacious idea.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas
        

You may have heard about the big TED conferences that are organized around the world every year around the slogan: "Ideas Worth Spreading." At these events, hyper-smart people give talks on cutting edge -- or sometimes obscure but interesting -- topics, and the audience members are given lots of time to talk and network amongs themselves. The talks are video recorded and made available for free on TED's Website.

That basic format is coming to Baltimore's Maryland Institute College of Art, and it's called TEDxMidAtlantic. I wrote a story today that talks about how more than 100 enthusiastic volunteers came together to organize the free all-day event. The photo depicts several organizers, including Dave Troy in the middle, whose idea it was to bring the event to Baltimore.

It's gonna be a packed house. Stop and say hi if you see me!

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas, East Coast, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Events (Baltimore area), Events (DC/No. Va. area), Geeks, Social Media
        

I have a confession to make: I have a Gmail account and a Yahoo email account and, about a month ago, I just gave up. I gave up trying to obsessively keep my inboxes clear and free of unnecessary clutter.

I whacked away at emails: the spam and the bacon (i.e. newsletters I subscribe to but never read) and the back and forth strings of conversations that took up a few kilobytes here and there.

But no more. It was like trying to cut down bamboo, frankly. Considering that Yahoo appears to offer unlimited email storage, and Google's storage -- at least for me -- is over 7 gigabytes, I've all but given up deleting emails.

In fact, the only place I must obsessively delete email now is at work, where we have a few megabytes of storage for our accounts. If we have too much, our accounts freeze up and we have to delete old emails before we can new ones. Grrrrrr....

Anybody else out there just stopped deleting emails? I found that I was spending many minutes every day sifting through and deleting. No more.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Big Ideas
        

Could this be the beginning of a trend?

NPR reports that the City of Los Angeles has voted to overhaul its email system, converting it from a Microsoft-based software system, to a Google Gmail system where the data will be kept private on Google's servers across the U.S.

With so many municipal and state governments strapped for cash these days, you've gotta wonder if this is gonna catch on. If L.A. is serious about doing it, shouldn't others take a hard look at it, too? Politicians eager to bring home some tax savings to their constituents may not be able to resist the urge to review their local government's spending on I.T., and figure out what they could push into the Google cloud.

For those looking for some more detail on the possible rationale behind this deal, take a look at this InformationWeek column, which gives four possible reasons that L.A. chose Google over Microsoft.

Hey Mayor Sheila Dixon -- is somebody in your office gonna take a closer look at this?

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Big Ideas, Government Tech, West Coast
        

At the University of Maryland Start-Up Boot Camp last week in College Park, Jim Chung, left, presented his list of common mistakes to avoid as a startup.

Chung is director of the MTech Venture Accelerator program at the university.

Here's his list (paraphrased):

Common Mistakes:

*) You have technology that's looking for a solution (as opposed to tech that immediately solves an existing problem).

*) You make too many assumptions about market share you stand to gain (you engage in top-down assumptions vs. bottom-up validation and lack customer understanding).

*) You have a "nice to have" vs. a "need to have" solution.

*) Thinking: "We have no competition."

*) You have no clear revenue model or path to profitability.

*) Your team is incomplete.

*) You don't have any metrics to measure your progress.

*) Lack of focus.

*) Failure to address the risks head-on.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Big Ideas, Events (Baltimore area), Startups, University Tech
        

Dave Troy here with Kris Appel, our guest blogger for today. Kris is the founder of Encore Path, a medical technology start-up in Baltimore.

As a first-time entrepreneur, raising the money to launch launch a medical device was a significant undertaking.

I am not only a first-time entrepreneur, but I chose to start a company in an unfamiliar field. I have a background in linguistics, but my company develops medical technology for stroke rehabilitation.

So I started this endeavor with two strikes against me. This month, I will close my Series A round, and my first product was launched this summer, a rehabilitation device that improves arm function in survivors of stroke and other brain injury. Here is how I was able to attract investment:

Continue reading "How to raise money for your tech startup" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Guest blogger week here at BaltTech may be winding down, but Mike Subelsky still has a few Q&As to share with us. Here's his latest.

Continuing on with my series of interviews with local entrepreneurs, here's Gabriel Weisz (pictured at right), co-founder of Salar, Inc, a medical software company, whom I met through the Greater Baltimore Technology Council.

Continue reading "Five Questions with Gabriel Weisz" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Startups
        

Guest blogger Mike Subelsky shares with us his non-scientific findings on who's doing a lot of novel work with open source. Feel free to nominate your own "open source heroes" in the comments section of this blog entry.

I did a quick survey over Twitter of people in Maryland who are involved in open source software and was amazed at who came out of the woodwork. Here is a quick and certainly non-inclusive list of open source contributors in our state, in no particular order:

• Jim Jagielski: Contributor to Apache, the most popular web server on the planet, and many other projects; also chairman and cofounder of the Apache Software Foundation

• John Trupiano: author of TimeCop, a really cool Ruby gem that helps developers test code that makes time comparisons and computations

• Shea Frederick: Core developer of the ExtJS framework for building rich Internet apps

• Dave Troy: A fellow guest contributor to this blog, creator of Astmanproxy (VoIP), votereport, and other projects

• Scott Paley: Has contributed marketing and documentation and donated staff hours to work on core components of the Plone CMS

• Robert Treat: Contributor to the PostgreSQL database

• Alan Viars: His OMHE (Open Mobile Health Exchange) project is getting picked up by microsyntax.org

• Jason Dixon: Core team member of the OpenBSD operating system

• Avdi Grimm: Author of the Ruby NullDB testing gem (Avdi's a Maryland native who lives in York, PA but frequents our tech scene all the time)

• Mark Harrison: Creator of helpmeict helpdesk system

• Theo Schlossnagle: Contributor to/creator of various Perl modules, Wackamole, Mungo, and other projects

Could this be a more instructive metric of Maryland technical vitality than statistical measures such as number postgraduate degree holders?

Posted by Liz Hacken at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Big Ideas, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers
        

Here's the second of guest blogger Mike Subelsky's posts interviewing local technologists. 

I interviewed a few of Maryland's most interesting technologists to find out more about their successes, failures, and lessons learned; the interviews are lightly edited and condensed by me for the blogging format. The second interview is with Christopher Ashworth (at right), creator of QLab show control software. Chris' mention of "lots of small risks" brings to mind a Tim Ferris post about Bill Gates and Dave Troy's Idea Garden.

Continue reading "Five Questions with Christopher Ashworth" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Big Ideas, East Coast, Startups
        

Guest poster Mike Subelsky is back with the first of a few interviews with local technologists

I interviewed a few of Maryland's most interesting technologists to find out more about their successes, failures, and lessons learned; the interviews are lightly edited and condensed by me for the blogging format. My first interview is with Clarence Wooten, a great role model in the Maryland tech scene. He is a serial entrepreneur whose latest venture is Groupsite.com. I think his story illustrates a kind of success that is within the grasp of more people in our area than realize it.

Continue reading "Five questions with Clarence Wooten" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Our guest blogger for today is Mike Subelsky, an organizer with Ignite (which David Troy just wrote about in a BaltTech guest post) and co-founder of OtherInbox.com. Chime in with your ideas on what the Baltimore tech scene needs to thrive.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that Baltimore has a vital and thriving technology culture. We have many good companies, events and organizations in town in various stages of growth, and it's a very creative time for starting new things. The activation energy for a new tech culture project is getting lower all the time!

This is my attempt to add fuel to the fire: a list of things our tech culture would use. I don't claim ownership or authorship of any of these ideas, and I really hope someone will see one of these and get it going. If you do you'll find a great deal of support and encouragement from the whole scene!

Continue reading "What does our local tech culture need?" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Big Ideas, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Geeks, Research, Startups
        

If you haven't read it yet, then run -- don't walk -- to Jay Hancock's latest, most excellent column where he talks with Yash Gupta, dean of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. In it, Gupta (left) talks about the difference in the innovation economies and cultures of Baltimore and Southern California's Silicon Valley.

He makes some interesting points. And, it seems there's a call to action somewhere in there for our business and political leaders to wake up and smell the Old Bay right under their noses.

I may be oversimplifying it, but Gupta seems to say that entrepreneurs are overly dependent around these parts on the federal government as a cash cow for contracts. Such dependence can be both financially and professionally rewarding, but stultifying -- partly because the government market is a different animal than the consumer and business market.

It was also refreshing for Gupta to point out that California has high taxes and a tough regulatory environment, and yet its Silicon Valley is still synonymous with business innovation -- so the excuse that Maryland isn't tax-friendly to businesses may be just that: an excuse.

Yet, the other side is hard to ignore, when billions of federal dollars are staring your local/regional economy in the face.

In an interview I did awhile back with Christian Johansson, the state's secretary of the Department of Business and Economic Development, he essentially noted that the federal government is the big gorilla in the room that businesses around here can't ignore.

If the Maryland companies don't take advantage of the steady spigot of contracts that are made available each year, than other companies in other states most certainly will.

What do you think?

(photo credit: JHU)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas, East Coast, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Government Tech, West Coast
        

Skype, the Voice-over-Internet telephony provider that allows you to make cheap calls and free video chats, appears to be working on a companion communication device for its popular software application that would work with a computer, gaming system or television.

A patent filing made public last month shows that Skype, which is owned by eBay, is working on a device (or devices), with a speaker and microphone in some permutations. Among the possibilities are devices that could connect to a computer, video game system or television.

The filing by Skype comes with diagrams, including Fig. 3 below, which shows a rectangular box with a screen and an attached headset. Another version of the device, in Fig. 5 would be a smaller Skype box (those little round knobs, 505 and 506, are a built-in speaker and a microphone) that would connect to a television (501) and would work with a remote control. 

(Aside: Wouldn't it be funny if that same remote just happened to be IBM's patent-pending auto-blogging remote, which would be able to auto-Twitter?) 

The point of the device seems to be to give Skype users a more dedicated way of receiving phone, video, SMS and instant messages. But it doesn't appear to have a video camera embedded in the device, so you'll still need a separate Web cam to do your Skype video chats.

The patent makes a few references to enabling users to field phone calls on gaming systems that don't interrupt their programs for Skype calls, so perhaps this is a new gadget geared toward gamer geeks.

The inventors listed on the filing are Duncan Lamb, Marek Laasik, Manrique Brenes, and Gareth O'Loughlin.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas, Gadgets, Gamers
        

There are a few more goodies in the news I reported yesterday of Discovery Communication's patent filing for an e-book reader.

The Discovery e-reader is a portable viewing device with a high-resolution LCD display, and would be a direct competitor to the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. (Discovery has thus far declined to comment on the patent filing.) But according to the schematics, the Discovery e-reader will have line in and line out jacks, and coaxial in and coaxial out jacks -- which suggests multimedia capabilities, too. Discovery appears to be setting up its own virtual e-book store, and has some previous patents on electronic book formats.

But there's another wrinkle to what Discovery wants to do: in the patent filing, there are diagrams of an e-book system that could be used by book stores and libraries. I wonder if they're devising a system where you can go to a library and, instead of taking out a paper book, you can borrow an e-book reader with multiple books stored on it. See below -- what does the diagram suggest to you?

So how will consumers get the e-books on the device? From the patent filing: "The distribution network may be an electronic book store, an Internet web site, a wired or wireless telecommunications network, an intranet, a radio program delivery system, a television program delivery system, including cable television, satellite television broadcast, and over-the-air broadcast, for example. The electronic book distribution network could include direct delivery through a mail delivery system of electronic books on a fixed media, such as a CD-ROM, for example."

Wow. That's a lot of different options for it. Make sense for a big broadcaster like Discovery to leverage all its assets in delivering the electronic content in a variety of ways.

It's unclear if Discovery has set-up any partnerships yet with their reader, but in another diagram depicting a virtual menu on the gadget, it shows options for accepting a fax or other message type, and reading the Cox news service, U.S. News and World Report, and Fodor's Travel Service. See below:

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas, Gadgets
        

Discovery Communications, which produces such cable channels as Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, may be working on its own e-book reader, according to a U.S. patent application made public today.

The diagrams included with Discovery's patent application, which was filed in February and made public today, depict a rectangular device with physical controls for user navigation. The device would be for reading e-books and "providing for e-commerce," and would be a direct competitor to the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader and the Sony Reader digital book reader.

Below is a sample diagram from the patent filing:

A phone call was placed this afternoon to Discovery's corporate communications office seeking comment. I'm waiting on a return call.

The Silver Spring-based company holds a patent on some security and copy protection features, and earlier this year sued Amazon for their alleged infringement of them with their Kindle and Kindle 2, according to this CNET article.

But it appears the disclosures in the patent filing today are the first signs that Discovery is seriously considering entering the e-book fray.

Hit the jump to learn more about the Discovery patent filing.

Continue reading "Discovery Communications working on a Kindle competitor?" »

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Big Ideas, Gadgets, Media
        

My blog post on Tuesday about Facebook trying to patent their "community translation" process, which they've been using to crowd-source the translation of their site around the world, really did end up going around the world, thanks to tons of retweets.

The issue even got picked up yesterday by TechCrunch, in a thoughtful post by Jason Kincaid who noted some other sites that have used crowd-sourcing in this way.

Which brings me to the poll of the day below. [Note: The first five people who vote and leave a comment will get a free "BaltTech" magnet for their fridge!]

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Big Ideas, Social Media, Web Dev & Apps, West Coast
        

What do you buy your blogger friend who's also a couch potato? Why, IBM's proposed new auto-blogging remote control, of course.

Engineers at IBM have been developing a TV remote control that can be programmed to auto-blog while you watch whatever it is you want to watch, according to the patent filing.

How does it work? Let's take a look at a snippet from the patent filing, which was submitted last year but didn't show up online until April.

A viewer selects a media program to view by use of a remote controller with networking capability. Upon the viewer wishing to send a blog posting to a blog, the viewer determines whether a tag to be included in the blog posting is to be a pre-existing tag or a custom tag, wherein the blog posting comprises program information about the media program useful to identify the media program. If the tag is to be a pre-existing tag, the viewer selects the pre-existing tag from a plurality of pre-existing tags using the remote controller and if the tag is to be a custom tag, the viewer generates the custom tag using the remote controller. If a protocol provided by the remote controller to send the blog posting to the blog allows a snapshot of the media program to be included in the blog posting, the remote controller takes the snapshot of the media program and includes it in the blog posting.

So, basically, IBM has built a pretty potent little remote control that can be networked. You can set it to automatically post what you're viewing to your blog. (The patent talks about posting automatically to a microblogging service -- probably Twitter.)

The patent also references Joost, the social network for video watchers. One might surmise that IBM is looking for a way to do what Joost does for online viewers, but for your television set. One of my favorite parts of the patent offers this rationale for the remote:

"...more than ever, people wish to be able to share their comments with others in real-time as they experience life. In the case of television, for example, one of the joys of watching television is discussing with one's friends the juicy bits of a favorite show or the latest television program."

I contacted an IBM spokesman who couldn't help me ferret out more details in time for this posting. He could only confirm that the patent filing -- for "automatic blogging during media viewing" -- was indeed theirs.

Want to read the full filing? Go here.

But come back and let me know what you think? Do you watch so much TV and share your viewing habits so often with others that you'd need such a remote control?

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Big Ideas, For The Home, Gadgets, Social Media
        

My latest hobby is scouring the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office's website for innovative ideas. One that stood out to me today: Facebook's patent application for what it called "community translation on a social network."

Below is a diagram I pulled from the patent application (filed in December), which can be found here.

Basically, in layman's terms (if I'm reading the patent app correctly), Facebook users will be able to submit text they seek translated to the Facebook community, with responses that can then be rated. Voila! Near-instant community translation.

Are the implications of such a service pretty big -- especially if the tool is designed in such a way that Facebookers can use it quickly and seamlessly? I have to think so. 

I tried getting a comment from Facebook on their patent application, but I received a generic response from their press email contact. I'll keep trying.

In the meantime, would you use such a tool on Facebook? My own take on it is that such a translation tool could potentially be a novel item, since most tools right now on the Web are algorithm based and far from perfect.

But if you can get the big crowd to translate for you quickly, and with better results, that could be something special for Facebook. No?

UPDATE: I got a response tonight from Elizabeth Linder, a Facebook spokeswoman, who clarified to me that this patent applies to their existing Translation tool, which they've been successfully using over the past year to get the site translated around the world.  Here's a link to the application.

Says Linder:

The translation app has been available on our site since we first introduced Spanish, and has been instrumental in enabling us to translate Facebook quickly and efficiently: it calls on the collective expertise of our users around the world to translate Facebook, so that the site feels comfortable for everyone, no matter what language they speak.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Big Ideas, Social Media, West Coast
        

You may recall the scene in The Empire Strikes Back (still my favorite Star Wars film), where Luke lost part of his arm in a duel with Darth Vader -- only to have it later replaced with a cool prosthetic. (Left, photo of the movie prop at a Star Wars show in Portland, OR, by The Kozy Shack via Flickr.com) 

Ah, Hollywood.

But you may not know that the federal government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (aka DARPA) has been funding the real-life development of next-generation prosthetics that one day will make the Luke arm a reality.

Ah, DARPA.

What's cool about this project is that part of it is being developed right here in Maryland, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel (of course it is.)

An article today in TechNewsWorld recaps the progress of the project, quoting Stuart Harshbarger, biomedicine team leader at Hopkins's APL and project manager for the DARPA effort.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Big Ideas, BioTech
        

My story today about people launching "hire me" Websites was sparked by "retweets" last month about Matt Bivons, who launched an online drive to get a job at Blue Sky Factory, a Baltimore-based email marketing firm. He calls it BSFShouldHire.me.

Who was this guy? Why was he doing this? Will we all eventually have our own "hire me" Websites? I spoke to Matt early on, and then ruminated on the phenomenon for a few weeks, poking around here and there and trying to see if anyone else was doing this. I started finding more and more sites like Matt's when I simply Googled "shouldhireme.com" or "hireme.com." (Here's a short list of some I perused.)

Quickly, I learned that Jamie Varon, a 24-year-old from California who launched TwitterShouldHireMe.com, may have been among the first -- if not the first -- to do something like this (at least since Twitter and Facebook have been around.)

Two people I interviewed who didn't make it into my print story were Susan Lewis and Eric Barker. But it wasn't because their efforts and ideas weren't remarkable. On the contrary:

Susan, 39, a marketing pro from Dallas, launched SusanHiresABoss.com, which turns the typical job hunt on its ear. If you're a boss, you can't hire Susan. She's gonna hire you. She graduated from Seth Godin's informal MBA program in New York this year (a six-month boot camp for smart, social-media-savvy people) and launched her site.

Susan told me about 30 companies expressed interest in her (30!), and she's narrowed the field down to about three potential employers. "Some (opportunities) could be project work," Lewis said. "There's one I might end up making an offer to."

Eric Barker, 36, of Los Angeles, told me how he's been running inexpensive ads on Facebook to target employers he wants to work for. The way it works is he puts up an ad that he targets to employees of a particular company who happen to be on Facebook. When you buy an ad on Facebook, the site offers you granular tools to target your ad to people, say, who claim they work for a certain company. The ads get him noticed and he gets calls from recruiters.

Barker, a former Hollywood screenwriter with an MBA, said his Facebook campaign has cost him little more than $100. He's targeted ads to Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Youtube and IDEO -- basically companies that are in media. He's gotten contacts and interviews, ironically, with other companies who were impressed by the ad.

He said he "went nuclear" with the Facebook approach because of the rough job market and he needed to get attention quickly. "My background is in Hollywood," he said. "Nothing in Hollywood gets done effectively through formal channels. Everything is done by friend of a friend and reputation. The real world is not that much different."

His dream job would be something in product marketing and/or development, he told me.

About his Facebook approach, he said: "We're all marketers now, like it or not. Getting access [through the Web and interactive social media tools] is easy. It's now all about marketing and branding yourself."

If you're curious about using Facebook -- and even LinkedIn -- as ways to advertise yourself to a new job, you should check out some tips from Willy Franzen over at the One Day, One Job blog.

Let me know if you have success with your online campaigns to get the job of your dreams (or even just a job your mildly happy about, especially if it involves decent pay and health bennies.)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Big Ideas, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Jobs & Recruiting, Social Media
        

Have you ever heard the phrase "Feds, Meds, Eds & Beds"?

I hadn't -- until I listened to Christian S. Johansson, head of the state Department of Business and Economic Development, drop it during his keynote address at the Maryland Incubator of the Year Awards on June 17.

In a room full of bright start-up companies, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and state biz development leaders, Johansson talked about the strength and resilience of the Maryland economy, in the face of a national recession.  A big reason for that strength, he said, is "Feds, Meds, Eds and Beds."  Here's what that catch-phrase means:

* Feds: The state benefits from tens of thousands of jobs tied directly and indirectly to federal government agencies that employ people at military and civilian facilities. (Think NSA at Fort Meade to the Social Security Administration headquarters at Woodlawn.) Contractors that do work for these federal agencies and military installations are also plentiful in Maryland. 

* Meds: The health care and social services industry is a huge employer in Maryland. Also, biotechnology is a growing, cutting-edge sector that's seen a lot of investment in recent years.

* Eds: Education. Higher education. And the research that comes out of institutions such as the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University.

* Beds: Tourism. From the Inner Harbor to the Eastern Shore to Deep Creek.

The notion of Feds, Meds, Eds & Beds sounds like a nifty marketing jingle for state leaders to use in their cheerleading and marketing of Maryland. What do you think?

Meantime, if you're interested in getting a snapshot of the Maryland economy, here are some links to peruse:

:: This state report has one of the latest overviews of Maryland's private-sector workforce.

:: The 2008 Maryland employment and payrolls data show a breakdown of public and private sector jobs, including average weekly wage per worker. (Hint: There are more workers in local and state government than federal, but federal workers have a higher average weekly salary. Gee, I wonder if that's why everybody seems to covet a job with the Feds. :-)

:: The Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore has more specific stats that drill down on the economic activity in the Baltimore area, such as this chart on employment by industry.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Big Ideas, East Coast, Government Tech
        

In the comments in the first post, Twitterer @ecogordo said he'd like to get my view on where the BaltTech community is heading.

Heck if I have a crystal ball -- like this guy on the left.

But here's what I do know: there are lots of people talking to each other in this town and in the greater Baltimore/Maryland tech scene.

Every week, you're hearing about tweet-ups and networking events. Perhaps all the tech-talk is nothing new, skeptics might say. Or maybe, thanks to a whole set of social media tools -- i.e. Twitter, Facebook -- people are making connections and sharing ideas at an exponentially increasing rate. You need such percolation to fuel the startup dreams (and new jobs) of tomorrow.

Check my calendar on the right of this page and you'll start to see the summer filling up with events, such as Baltimore's first BarCamp.(On Twitter, www.twitter.com/barcamp)

One of the best local posts about the tech scene can be found on Mike Subelsky's blog. Subelsky -- a hacker, Ignite Baltimore co-founder, theater improv dude and all around brainy guy -- gives us his informed take and neatly summarizes some of the trends we're all starting to see. Take a look.

What do you think about Baltimore's tech scene? Where is it going and where does it need to go?

 (Photo credit: Karl Merton Ferron, Sun photographer)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Big Ideas
        

Welcome to BaltTech. Don't know about you, but I am happy to be here, on this patch of earth pixels and code. Having worked at The Baltimore Sun now for 10 years, I've been lucky to cover a broad range of topics, from business to crime. (Here's a sampling of my latest work.)   

The past few years, I was deep in the thicket of Baltimore crime reporting and breaking news, seeing all the negative things that were possible in this city, day in, day out. It was during this period -- when I also started carrying a video camera and an iPhone to do my job -- that I began  gaining an appreciation for the importance of technology and innovation, in Baltimore and beyond our great little city.

I took a couple Web courses at the University of Baltimore. I built a Website, played with blogs, shot tons of shaky video at home and work, shelled out big bucks for Adobe Creative Suite 3. In short: I ramped up my geekitude from 0-60 in a very short period of time. But i won't embellish: I'm still a newbie. In fact, you'll probably correct me on many occasions. That's okay: I look forward to learning something new every day.

For more than a year now, I've nurtured this idea of a tech blog that gets up each day and tries to cover the interesting tech trends coming out of Baltimore.

Not just the big companies and the federal government contractors, but the little guys and gals, too. Not just the established players, but the startup dreamers who are hustling to bring their visions to life.

Somewhere out there, maybe here in Maryland, the next Google could be being born right now. Maybe it'll be a white-hot startup. Or maybe it'll branch out of groundbreaking work done by students and professors at one of Maryland's colleges and universities. Either way, I want to be there to Tweet it, blog it, report it, photograph it, and videotape it. (Did i just say videotape?) 

So what will this blog cover, you wonder? Well... for a hint, take a look at the categories I've created. These are my interests. They will likely change and evolve over time as I roll up my sleeves and get into this blog and the tech beat.

But generally, I want to write about the big ideas driving Maryland's tech sector forward, the stuff the entrepreneurs and technologists are building, the people they're hiring, and how well private industry, our public and private universities, and our government work together to create opportunities (or not). I want to break news here -- and I'll need your help.

I also want to pick my head up from Baltimore and look at what other innovators up and down the East Coast are doing.

We should strive to have some fun in this space. I'll do some videos and share and feature yours. Heck, I may dabble in podcasting and live-stream video. Anybody hear of 12seconds.tv? Here's my channel. And, of course, I'm on Twitter, @gussent. (And, @balttech, plus using the #balttech hash tag.)

I'll introduce myself at the networking events, beer in one hand, iPhone and/or video camera in the other. And, most importantly, I just want listen to you. It may sound corny, but reporters need people talking to them, telling them what's important in their lives. We're not omniscient.

What would you like to see covered in BaltTech? Leave a comment below. For detailed pitches and story ideas, shoot me an email at gus.sentementes(at)baltsun(dot)com.

(photo credit: Doug Kapustin, Sun photographer)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Categories: Big Ideas