The beauty of TedxMidAtlantic wasn't just that it was a compelling, full-day event for the speakers and participants, with talks and presentations that were food for the mind.

The organizers and participants also did a great job of making the event resonate beyond the walls of MICA's theater where it was held. If you couldn't attend Tedx on Thursday, you could at least watch a live video stream of the event.

As each speaker finished, the organizers were able to instantly archive each talk, so that it was available on the Web site. Pretty impressive stuff.

A good, written play-by-play of the event can be found at the Inside Charm City blog, for those who want an indepth feel for how the event flowed through the day.

Over on Twitter, participants were posting their thoughts using the #tedx and #tedxmid hash tags.

The Flickr group for TedxMidAtlantic photos had 570 submissions as of this morning.

Several people blogged about the experience attending TedxMidAtlantic, including:

* Scott Paley

* Russell Heimlich

* Tyler Waldman

* Jim Doran

* Annmary Liu (handwritten notes!)

What other content is out there? Drop some links in the comments below! (Above, Flickr photo of Anna Vidovic by The Plan8 Podcast)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

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
        

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
        

The Greater Baltimore Tech Council tonight is throwing its annual bash, TechNite, starting at 5 p.m., at the Baltimore Convention Center.

On the agenda: a keynote by Gary Vaynerchuk, the social media guru, wine expert, and creator of Wine Library TV; awards to local Baltimore tech luminaries; some schmoozing with local companies giving presentations; and hopefully, if it's anything like last year, some good food and drink. About 1,000 people are expected to attend.

Drop a note below if you're going. Maybe I'll see you there!

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

What are you up to Wednesday night? Guest blogger Mike Subelsky wants you to check out Innovate Baltimore.

There's a promising new event debuting on Wednesday October 7th at the Gin Mill in Canton: Innovate Baltimore, described by its organizers as "an evening of fun mingling with other Baltimore area business leaders, entrepreneurs, creative and digital technology enthusiasts". It runs from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. Attendance is free but the organizers say you need to RSVP ahead of time.

Even if you're a habitué of Outlet Baltimore, Refresh, or TechNite, here's why you should check it out: it's organized by two people with a background in the games industry: Benjamin Walsh, a producer at Bethesda Softworks, and Tina Tyndal, a game marketing and brand consultant who writes the blog Girls Who Game. We haven't seen much gamer involvement in Baltimore's tech scene, so I'm betting Innovate will attract some new folks.

I'm totally on board with their mission: "...providing individuals with networking and educational opportunities which will allow them to generate new ideas, foster entrepreneurship and strengthen the professional community in the region. Our meetings spotlight local businesses, talent, emergent technology and trends, all while sharing a drink (or two) with friends."

Posted by Liz Hacken at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Events (Baltimore area), Geeks, Startups
        

Mike Subelsky tells us about a cool conference that's coming to town next June. Mark your calendars (if you've bought a 2010 calendar already).

RailsConf, an annual four-day gathering of Ruby-on-Rails enthusiasts, announced this week that their 2010 conference will be held in Baltimore. I've attended it for the past few years and always had a great time. Why is this a big deal?

1) Rails is an important web technology used to build web applications quickly and flexibly; the most famous example is Twitter.

2) This is the first time RailsConf has been on the East Coast (in years past it was held in Portland, OR and Las Vegas).

3) It's going to bring a couple of thousand smart technologists from all over the world to our region and will be a great opportunity to show off the city and state to people who might someday make a home here, start a business here or work for a startup here.

4) It will attract many programmers and entrepreneurs from the region to Baltimore who might not otherwise have a chance to be exposed to the cutting edge of web app development.

5) There's a pretty large group of Ruby and Rails programmers in the area, with regular meetups in Northern Virginia, DC, and Baltimore. This event will help put that community on the map!

Posted by Liz Hacken at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

Here's another dispatch from David Troy of Beehive Baltimore to shed some light on what Ignite is all about.

If you had 5 minutes on stage and 20 slides that rotate automatically every 15 seconds, what would you say? That's the question that 48 presenters will answer at three upcoming Ignite events in Annapolis, D.C., and Baltimore.

Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis, and is overseen by the technology book publisher O'Reilly. Since the founding of the program, hundreds of five minute talks have been given across the world.

Continue reading "Ignite events help build regional buzz" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area), Events (DC/No. Va. area), Geeks
        

TedxMidAtlantic, a locally-organized conference, last night announced the first five speakers for the all-day event in early November.

The conference will take place at MICA, at Falvey Hall, on Thursday, Nov. 5. Something like 20 some-odd speakers are expected to be lined up: all smart people with something innovative to share.

The conference is organized around the theme of "the power of stories" -- so it should be an interesting day. You may wish to take the day off from work if you're planning to attend. Why not?

In case you don't know, TedxMidAtlantic is organized by local folks under a license from TED, the larger international conference. TED stands for technology, entertainment and design, but the four-day conference encompasses many more disciplines. The speakers and audience who attend these events usually interact closely.

TedxMidAtlantic is free to attend, but you have to fill out an application first.

Below are the speakers they've lined up so far:

* Tyler Cowen, economist, professor at George Mason University and author of Create Your Own Economy and Discover your Inner Economist, among others

* Bob Duggan, founder, Tai Sophia Institute, a leading educational institution for the study of wellness

* Rebecca Hoffberger, founder and director, American Visionary Art Museum, one of the nation’s premier museums celebrating art produced by self-taught artists

* Naomi Natale, TED Fellow, artist, and Founder and Director, One Million Bones as well as The Cradle Project

* Sonja Sohn, actress (played Det. Kima Greggs on The Wire) and founder, Rewired for Change, a nonprofit organization that works to empower young people living in the most underserved communities across the country through education, media advocacy, and street-based intervention.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area), Events (DC/No. Va. area)
        

::Updated at 4:25, with embedded video below of Clay Shirky giving a TED talk on how "social media can make history."

::@TEDxMidAtlantic news breaking on Twitter now....

The TED conference has been licensed to some independent organizers who want to bring a version of it to the Mid-Atlantic in November 2009. And by "Mid-Atlantic," they mean Baltimore, hon.

Here's the Website: http://tedxmidatlantic.com/

Admission will be free but limited to about 250 people. No word on location yet. The theme of the conference, according to @TEDxMidAtlantic's Twitter feed: "The Power of Stories" - Humans organize the world in stories; it's how we perceive design and art. Every design tells a story.

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

The event is being pulled together by Dave Troy, a Baltimore-based entrepreneur who helped organize the recent Barcamp Baltimore event. Troy has also started the Beehive Baltimore, a coworking space, and the Baltimore Angels, an investor group focused on funding promising Baltimore-area startups.

It's the latest event we've seen in the Baltimore area that's targeting the region's creative and entrepreneurial classes, to pull them together to bounce big ideas off each other. (We've had SocDevCampEast, Ignite Baltimore, Barcamp Baltimore, WordCamp Mid-Atlantic -- all in the span of about 18 months.)

How badly does Baltimore need stuff like this? What do you think?

Meantime, you can watch Clay Shirky talk about how social media is transforming our society.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area), Events (DC/No. Va. area)
        

Tomorrow evening (Tuesday, June 30) is the fourth installment of Outlet Baltimore -- an uber casual socializing and networkizing event for techies and creative types in the Baltimore area.

Outlet Baltimore in its own words:

Outlet Baltimore is a semi-regular gathering for New Media professionals in Baltimore and surrounding areas. The goal is to provide a mostly informal opportunity for us to convene in the real world and put faces to the names behind our blog posts, websites, Twitter feeds, and LinkedIn/Facebook profiles. It’s designed as a complement to some of the more formal and/or targeted events that Baltimore is already lucky to have, such as Ignite and Refresh.

This one is being held at the Windup Space, 12 W. North Ave., Baltimore, Md.

I've been before and it's a pretty chill scene. Maybe I'll see you there.

P.S. I think it starts around 6 p.m., right Outlet Baltimore? (I didn't see a time listed on the site. Past events have started at 6 p.m.)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

We're entering the slow summer season and my tech calendar is starting to gather cobwebs.

Do you have a techy-minded or tech-related event going on in July and August? Job fairs? Networking events? Contests and competitions for geeks? Let me know.

Better yet: leave it in the comments below so everyone else can see, too. I'll try to plug it into the events calendar the next chance I get.

I can't promise I'll be at every single evening event, but I try to go to at least one per week. Keeps me from watching TV and playing on Facebook. :-)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

Our wee little Ignite Baltimore event that started last year has grown and grown and grown. If you may recall, Ignite Baltimore is where guest speakers get to talk about cool stuff -- but they're only given 5 minutes and 20 slides.

So, you've got eclectic topics, interesting speakers, and a crowd drawn from the Baltimore area's creative, technology, civic and business circles.

Best of all: It's a free event. When? Tomorrow night at the Windup Space, 12 W. North Ave., Baltimore, Md. Unfortunately, all the reserved spaces are filled, and there's a waiting list. Fortunately, the crowd cycles through pretty well through the course of the night, so there's a good chance you'll get in early.

I'm not a booster or a sponsor, but I do appreciate an event where I can meet interesting, non-drunk people -- especially on a school night in Baltimore.

Speaking this morning with Mike Subelsky, a co-organizer and founder of Otherinbox.com, he told me that Ignite Baltimore #4 will be held at a new venue: the Walters Art Museum, on October 22, 2009.  Schwanky. (Karl Jones at the Walters confirmed it for me just a moment ago...)

It will still be free -- it's just a bigger space, which was needed because the event's been maxing out at around 300 people, with a 100-person waiting list.

If you can't make it there tomorrow night, a local media website (RadarRedux) will be live-broadcasting from there. You'll be able to watch it on their website or here on my blog, as I'll embed their video player. Of course, it's more fun to be there in person.

The other co-organizers, by the way, is Patti Chan, of 600block.com.

A lot of the Baltimore tech community has really gotten behind the event. Subelsky sent me over a list of sponsors. It's a mini Who's Who of creative, techy folks and entrepreneurial companies in the Baltimore area.

Catch them on the jump.

Continue reading "Ignite Baltimore #3 tomorrow night at the Windup Space -- plus: new venue news" »

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

Follow the Tweets from Barcamp Baltimore today. The ideas shared at this event today will probably percolate among the participants for long after the event, and people may continue to use the Twitter hash tag #bcbmore for a bit. Watch the geeky action unfold right here!

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

Barcamp has started. The roughly 80 or so attendees who showed up this morning hashed out, through discussion and debate, more than 20 topics they want to talk about in small groups for the rest of the day.

It's taking place right now, Saturday, June 20th, at the University of Baltimore's Thumel Business Center. And it's free. If you're bored on a rainy Saturday in the Baltimore area and looking to chat with some smart folks and make some new connections, this may be a good place to start.

They've got free coffee, too! What is Barcamp? Some describe it as an "unconference." (Here's a wiki that tracks the events all over the world.) It's intended to be a democratic process where people from all walks of life and professional experience can come to talk about the things that matter to them most.
Here's just a sampling of some of the topics that will be covered in today's sessions: Right now, I'm sitting in a session on the future of journalism in Baltimore.

A discussion led by Dave Troy, a local entrepreneur who is promoting the idea of journalism startup (or startups) in the Baltimore area. On a big screen, he's got a thought-provoking and recently popular blog post by Clay Shirky, a new media thinker, titled "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable."

Other sessions: building green, future of social networks, online fundraising for nonprofits, social entrepreneurship in Baltimore, photography for beginners, location-based software and games, locally-developed cool technology, and many more.

And a happy hour at Brewer's Art afterwards, after 5 p.m. Debate hard, drink well, right? :-) On Twitter, the hashtag to follow is #bcbmore.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

The "camps" are proliferating around Maryland, and now you can add "HealthCamp" to the list.

For the uninitiated, the "camp" model (also known as barcamp) of conferencing has its roots in a techie/geeky period in California a few years back involving benevolent hackers, sleeping bags and a publisher of tech books. (This Wikipedia entry explains it better than I can in a few short words).

It's meant to be a format where people from diverse backgrounds and with varying skill sets meet on the day of a conference and pretty much decide what they want to talk about.... that day.

In Baltimore, we've seen a couple of "camp"-style conferences in the past two years, with more to come, including BarCamp Baltimore on Saturday (June 20th) at the University of Baltimore, where geeky people from all walks of life are expected to congregate and talk about what they all likely hope will be cool interesting things that could help trigger new ideas, startups, and programs in Baltimore.

(Yes, B'more geeks: You counted corrrectly. That's not one, but TWO camps later this week.)

Recently, I caught up with Mark Scrimshire, who's been busy organizing HealthCamp Maryland, which will take place this Friday (June 19) at Stevenson University in Owings Mills. (He's @ekivemark on Twitter, btw.)

Last year, his first year organizing it, about 8-10 people came. HealthCamp, Mark tells me, is about getting people with diverse backgrounds and interests in tackling the country's health care problems into the same room to hash out groundbreaking new approaches.

"I describe myself as chief instigator and troublemaker," Scrimshire told me. "I'm deliberately trying to bring together these different communities. I do want doctors and nurses to come along. I do want administrators, and software startups and entreprenuers."

Continue reading "HealthCamping in Maryland" »

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

I attended the Greater Baltimore Tech Council's summer wine event at the Emerging Technology Center in Canton on Thursday night, and it was a pretty packed place.

About 120 people showed up. The after-party continued for some at the Austin Grill.

It's a casual event -- helped along, of course, by the copious amounts of wine that was poured. Technology companies that want to introduce themselves to other business folks can volunteer to pour their favorite wines at these quarterly events.

Some choose to pour beer. Check out Scott Palmer and John Busteed, two employees of RWD Technologies, with their glasses of Resurrection ale. (pictured left)

For a list of the companies who poured, check out the GBTC's summary of the event. There's also a bunch of photos on Flickr, and of course, the requisite Twitter thread.

Mario Armstrong, a tech journalist who blogs and does radio reports for NPR, WYPR, and WEAA, was also shooting footage for new online video program highlighting the tech industries in the Baltimore/Washington area. It's called BWTechShow.com. Pretty cool stuff.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

It's Tuesday morning, and more than 100 people are about to gather at the Sheraton in Towson to listen to these four people talk about how their companies are growing in a recession. It's a talk hosted by the Greater Baltimore Technology Council. 

From the left, it's Art Jacoby, the panel moderator and business growth adviser; Tim Lorello, global commercial sales senior V.P. and chief marketing officer, Telecommunication Systems Inc. (service provider to wireless cos.), of Annapolis; Michele Perry, chief marketing officer, Sourcefire (computer network intrusion prevention), of Columbia; and Todd Johnson, president of Salar Inc. (clinical software for hospitals), of Baltimore.

Any questions you want me to ask these folks? Shoot me them via Twitter. (http://twitter.com/gussent)

I'll bring you the highlights in a later blog post. Meantime, can someone point me to the coffee?

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)
        

Two things I'm hoping you find useful on this blog are the events listings and the CareerBuilder jobs feed.

If there's a tech event in the area (and by "area" I mean the Baltimore/Washington area), feel free to shoot me an email (gus.sentementes(at)baltsun(dot)com) and I'll add it to the calendar you see below. The event will also appear in the events feed in the right column.

And, there's a good chance if the event is on this calendar that I'll be there, covering it in one way, shape or form.

The jobs feed (also in the right rail), I thought, was a real necessity.

There's a lot of churn right now in the technology sector in Maryland. Here's hoping that people who are cut free from jobs in the tech sector quickly land on their feet.

Any other useful things out there you think I should add to this blog as a resource? Drop me a note below.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Events (Baltimore area)