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
        

A big annual conference for the biosciences industry and its investors will be at the Washington DC Convention Center from Wednesday to Friday. Hundreds of companies, experts, investors, and policy wonks will be in attendance.

Anybody from the Baltimore-area biotech scene going? Drop a note in the comments below if you are.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Events (DC/No. Va. area)
        

Jimmy Gardner has a recap of last night's Bootstrap Maryland panel in DC over at TechCocktail. Check it out.

And if you want to follow the Twitter stream, here's the #bootstrapmd tag.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Events (DC/No. Va. area), Startups
        

Admittedly, I am late to the Wii party. For my fourth wedding anniversary this month, I bought my wife and I a Wii. In addition to Wii Sports, which comes with the console, I picked up Mario Kart.

Now, I've played with Play Stations and XBoxes before, and they are amazing machines. My younger brothers have a Play Station 3, which I can't help but spend hours playing whenever I visit them -- to my wife's chagrin.

But I noticed that she was never interested in picking up the controllers to play with the PlayStation.

Many months ago, however, I remember my wife saying she'd be interested in a Wii. I stowed that tidbit away in my tiny Neandearthal-ish brain -- until a recent trip to a Best Buy, where I was drawn to the Wii display.

Within minutes, another small fold in my Neanderthal brain was triggering the impulse to buy, buy, buy. I picked up a box of Wii. Soon after, I was approached by a man who said he worked for Sony, who happened to be in the store. He said, for a $100 more, I could own a PlayStation 3, with built-in Blu-Ray player and Netflix streaming, and tried to get to check it out.

Fair enough, but I told him I didn't really care for Blu Ray and I already had Netflix streaming through my Roku player.

Plus, I said, my wife would really only play video games with a Wii. For some reason, I instinctively thought I could get away with buying a Wii as an anniversary gift, but a Play Station 3 could land me sleeping on the couch alone for a couple nights.

Sure enough, later that night, I watched my wife play Wii bowl, Wii tennis, Wii golf, and Wii boxing. It was delightful.

This was surely a first. Aside from enjoying great literature and warm, heartfelt talks, my wife and I now had another cool thing in common: we game together.

So how about that, ladies? Do you prefer the Wii to other gaming systems, and if so, why?

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Events (DC/No. Va. area), Gadgets, Gamers
        

It's not too late to sign up for the latest installment of Bootstrap Maryland, an event that helps entrepreneurs navigate a startup business on a tight budget.

The event is tomorrow (Thursday, Oct. 29) at the Pillsbury Law firm in Washington D.C. It will feature a panel discussion titled: "What You Need to Know About Money for Your Startup in 2009."

I won't be able to make it, but if people are Tweeting from the event -- or if someone wants to give their fellow BaltTechies a synopsis of some things they learned -- feel free to email me at gus(dot)sentementes(at)baltsun.com.

The speakers are pretty experienced folks.

They include:

* Jay Virdy, CEO of Summize, the Twitter search engine that was ultimately bought by Twitter itself.

* Paul Singh, founder of Philtro, a site that helps Twitter uses manage their Twitter stream.

* John Burke, a partner at True Ventures, which invests in early-stage startups.

* Matt Swartz, an attorney and partner at Pillsbury Law who focuses on mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital investments, public and private securities offerings, and corporate governance.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Events (DC/No. Va. 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)