Smart, sensitive perspectives on Baltimore current events

These are the best articles I've read so far about recent events in my adopted hometown. I prepared it for my weekly newsletter but wanted to disseminate here as well. Even if you're not local, it's worthwhile reading: these are American patterns.

• As Riots Follow Freddie Gray's Death in Baltimore, Calls for Calm Ring Hollow (theatlantic.com): "When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con."

• The long, painful and repetitive history of how Baltimore became Baltimore (washingtonpost.com): "...the outright racism that motivated many of these historic policies has eroded with time. "But we have to understand," Fullilove says, "the machine can work without the operator."

• The Nature of Poverty (nytimes.com): "The world is waiting for a thinker who can describe poverty through the lens of social psychology."

• What you really need to know about Baltimore, from a reporter who’s lived there for over 30 years - The Washington Post (washingtonpost.com): "The two worlds bump up against one another only on occasion. Maybe when a line of daredevils on dirt bikes — the storied 12 O’clock Boys — startle motorists by doing near-vertical, high-speed wheelies in city traffic, or when groups of kids brawl in the tourist zone surrounding the Inner Harbor."

Help Thread Help Baltimore at the Baltimore Hackathon

Update 11/12/2014: Added an FAQ at the bottom and more problems and projects. You don't have to be present at this particular weekend to help!

This weekend I am planning to work on a service project at the Baltimore Hackathon and I would love to form a group to work together! I have been working with Thread, an excellent local nonprofit group that helps students in Baltimore. I'm interested in working with them because of their unusual, comprehensive approach, and because they are already fairly tech-savvy.

Details below. Please e-mail me if you'd like to team up!

BACKGROUND

Thread, formerly the Incentive Mentoring Program (IMP), has a volunteer base of 700+ volunteers who are providing continuous daily support to 150+ students, who live and go to school in neighborhoods all across Baltimore. These volunteers work in teams called Thread Families to provide each student with everything they need to succeed in school as well as increased access to community resources. Because of the diverse range and sometimes urgent nature of interactions, Thread has struggled to capture the full depth and breadth of their efforts and impact. Thread works in every part of the city, 365 days a year, and commit to working with students for 10 years.

PROBLEM 1: CAPTURE MORE INTERACTIONS AND LOCATION OF INTERACTIONS

According to Thread (emphasis mine):

"Up until 2013 we tracked most of our activities via volunteer logs using Google Spreadsheets and Forms, but at year-end the hours that were logged were always far short of what we know had actually happened in Thread Families. We think the barriers had to do with poor ease of use and lack of feedback from the system. It was difficult to log things from a smartphone, and you never received any feedback from your interactions, which essentially went into a black hole (a Google Spreadsheet that was inconvenient to access and check). In 2013, we applied for a grant with NextJump to help create a website optimized for mobile devices that would make logging significantly easier.

"A small team of developers at NextJump donated two weeks of time to create ThreadShare, which is both aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. However, ThreadShare is still missing two critical components, a more comprehensive feedback loop and increased engagement functionality. While interactions are now posted for Thread volunteers to see, the overall app is still relatively limited in its functionality. You can't post pictures, you can't location track and see a map of your impact in Baltimore, and you don't know how you fare as compared to your fellow volunteers.  Understanding the impact of their hard work and connectedness to a larger movement is critical in encouraging volunteers to continue and increase their commitment.  

"I truly believe that with a few small tweaks, like the ones mentioned above, ThreadShare v2.0 could be more than just an administrative tool, but a key engagement strategy as we fully transition from a small non-profit to a movement within Baltimore. I also hope that, since Thread is all about facilitating connection, the app would be something that we can then share with other nonprofits for their use in engaging volunteers." 

"A common criticism of Thread is that because we serve 150+ students, our impact is small. The Thread vision is not about just tutoring underperforming high school students facing significant challenges outside of the classroom, however; it is about creating “intentional families” with strong relationships and weaving a new social fabric. It is about ending the sense of social isolation that many students and volunteers within the community feel, and it is about facilitating relationships that transcend barriers of race and class. Our current metrics highlight student achievement and our ability to accomplish our mission, but fall short of telling the full story of the overwhelming comprehensive and extensive nature of what we do and the impact that it also has on the lives of our volunteers and the Baltimore community. Only the day-to-day actions of our volunteers paint a complete picture of what individualized support and relationship building really means.”

PROBLEM 2: SALESFORCE INTEGRATION

Thread is moving various business operations to a Salesforce application, and there is currently no automatic means of transferring IMPshare data to Salesforce.

PROBLEM 3: MAINTENANCE PLAN TO PROTECT AGAINST CODE ROT

There is no person or company currently responsible for the day-to-day upkeep or improvement of IMPshare and no easy way for volunteers to contribute source code to the project. There is however a staging environment where code changes can be tested. The plan should also include regular backups of ThreadShare's MySQL database.

TECHNOLOGIES

The IMPshare app runs on a LAMP stack with the CodeIgniter framework and jQuery. The source code is currently hosted on the IMPshare server and does not appear to be version-controlled.

POTENTIAL HACKATHON PROJECTS

• Partially address problem #3 by engaging Baltimore's PHP and mobile web communities: we can make IMPshare easy to work on.
• Move the code to a private bitbucket or github repository. Consider making it an open source application.
• Create a setup script that installs dependencies and allows code to be run locally
• Write technical documentation & make diagrams, including a thorough README that explains how to run the app in a development environment
• Create sample / test data
• Create an app deployment procedure for the staging and production environments
• Sign up to present the project at Baltimore PHP and Mobile and Techies For Good meet ups
• Draft an RFP for PHP consultancies to estimate the cost for ongoing app maintenance (routine things that are harder to get volunteers to focus on, such as bug fixes, security patches, etc.)
• Prototype a leaderboard tool. This could be a separate application that connects to IMPshare’s MySQL database, runs a SQL query, and emails a leaderboard to Thread leadership (who could then review it and forward to volunteers).
• If Thread likes it, this report could be incorporated directly into the app’s user interface
• Add a “Neighborhood” field to the user interface
• Can leverage HTML5 APIs to auto-fill with the user’s current location
• Prototype an impact map that uses various Google geocoding APIs to geocode locations using the new "neighborhood" field
• Setup MySQL backups
• Create a standalone reporting app that allows database gurus to create SQL reports that could be embedded in Google Docs
• Prototype an IMPshare-to-Salesforce connector
• Will need to gather more data about Thread’s salesforce installatio

FAQ

Q: I want to help but this is pretty short notice so I'm not available this weekend? Can I still help?

A: Totally! We consider the hackathon to be a motivating/catalyzing/social occasion but I expect most of the work will occur over the next months and years. We want to help in a sustainable way, and want you to contribute in any way you can and would enjoy.

Q: I'm new / inexperienced / young / don't know PHP. Can I still help?

A: Yes! The main point of this exercise is to connect enthusiastic people to Thread to help them leverage technology as much as possible so they can get back to their core mission of helping kids.

Q: I'm a designer, can I help?

A: Yes! One of the things we can build is a nice standalone reporting tool that could be made more useful if it had a real designer behind it. Also there may be things about the current app that you think will increase engagement. Also, the "leaderboard" concept is pretty prototypical at this point. For it to be useful, it needs to look and feel right.

Q: I'm a tech writer, can I help?

A: Yes! One of our goals is to make the project easy to setup and administer for new volunteers and for Thread. The existing docs are awesome and we can build on that foundation.

Baltimore Innovation Week Kicks Off Friday

Baltimore Innovation Week 2014 starts on Friday. The schedule is pretty spectacular - if you care about cities and technology and innovation, you gotta be there!

Our event Ignite Baltimore is one of the events; tickets are sold out but we release a lot of waiting list tickets.

Requiem for gb.tc

I'm a little late to write about this, but it's taken awhile to get my thoughts together. I'm so crazy busy with Staq right now that I'm going to write fast.

Last month we learned that gb.tc, one of my favorite Baltimore institutions, is going "on hiatus".  This news filled-me with sadness and I don't want the event to go by without remarking on it. gb.tc brought a lot of vitality to the city. It felt like a uniquely Baltimore institution, something that other cities would eventually import from us. I can't think of another institution that cares about helping Baltimore develop innovative industries and people. There are plenty of foundations and non-profits around town that could argue with that statement, I suppose, but my answer to all of them would be: "yes, what you're doing is important, but you're only focused on this one small piece of the puzzle", or "you are too slow-moving and focused on top-down solutions to ever make much of an impact". That, to me, was the special competency of the gb.tc - harnessing the grassroots/bottom-up energy of technologists and helping organizing it into a force for good in the city.

The general sense I get from my peers is "the tech community is self-organizing, so we didn't really need what those guys were doing" which I think is flat-out, dead wrong. It's true that Baltimore has many interesting, vibrant events, they're for the most part labors of love done by people who have other priorities besides making the city great, and they depend on the force of personality of a small group of hard-working volunteers. There still ought to be a team of people committed to growing these events and ensuring we don't lose momentum (something I called for back in 2011). For example, I helped run the first (and so far, only) RailsGirls event in Baltimore. I think we need to be doing 2 or 3 of those per year, given how long the waiting list for that event was...I just don't have the bandwidth to do it. Who is going to pick up that mantle? (Fortunately, Girl Develop It has come to Baltimore, but look at all the time that went by between RailsGirls and Girl Develop It).

gb.tc also developed deep relationships with different parts of the city - no one else was trying to connect the more entrepreneurial part of the tech community with the public sector, as exemplified by "Hack for Change Baltimore" which had strong city support. The city would not be trying to support more hackathons this year if not for gb.tc's efforts. They've also provided free startup mentoring,  the "Baltimore Weekly" podcast, amazing "Tech Crawls", and many other valuable services.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense here. Maybe go read that Innovation Community Manager post I wrote in 2011 to get a sense of what we've lost.

It sounds like Betamore is going to try to provide a soft-landing for gb.tc. I feel skeptical of the idea but I really want it to succeed - I just think there's an inevitable mismatch between the mission of a for-profit company (even a mission-driven company like Betamore) and the social-good mission of the gb.tc.

Thank you to Jason Hardebeck, Andrew Hazlett, and Sharon Paley for all of their hard work over the past few years (along with all of the other people who built gb.tc into what it was before their tenure). Your efforts made Baltimore a better place to do creative things, and we're poorer without you.

We want to pay you to learn Ruby in Baltimore

Update 7/29/14: We are not accepting new applications at this time. When we do this again I will definitely post details here. Check out this summary of how things went!

Update 9/3/13: Pando Daily wrote an article about this, includes a few more details about our motivation

My startup Staq has a big technical challenge to solve, and we are assembling a team of people in Baltimore to tackle it. We're looking for people who have basic technical knowledge and want to become proficient in Ruby programming. This would be a temporary engagement lasting about 3 to 6 months.

The team will be responsible for building our core technology comprising hundreds of small API and web-scraping integration projects using tools like Mechanize, Typhoeus, and CasperJS. We built an internal DSL to make this code easy(-ish) to write, test, and debug, so that once you know what you're doing, most projects take a day or less. Except some of them can take days, so this work is not for the faint of heart! 

These projects are ideal work for an entry-level programmer: they're pretty fun and don't usually require deep knowledge of Ruby. They are very important to the company and core to how we grow the business - which means your work has a great deal of meaning, unlike the busy work many programmers are forced to do. 

We are experiencing rapid growth. In order to support our customers, we need to temporarily accelerate the number of integrations we do per week. Since it's temp work suitable for new programmers, we'd like to use this as a training ground for new Ruby developers in Maryland. We want people to start on the integration team as hourly employees, with the goal of either graduating to a salaried position within Staq or moving on to work at another software company in the area with a reference from me.

We can pay you a decent hourly wage, but you would also get unlimited mentoring and training from me and other Staq programmers. I personally consider talent development one of my main jobs as a CTO, and I will work hard to help you reach you career goals, whatever they are.

General prerequisites: We need people who can solve problems and thrive in a startup environment of low supervision, high accountability, max flexibility, who want to be coached. It can be challenging to figure out the best way to scrape some of these sites, so you'll need to be dogged and persistent. We also want people who are good at communicating and keeping the rest of the team updated. You should have a track record as a volunteer, an organizer, a professional, a parent, a student, a veteran, etc. Bonus: you have a reference from someone I know. Rummage my connections on LinkedIn!

Technical prerequisites: You must be able to prove that you have basic knowledge of programming and working at the command line. You know what variables and methods are, you've written a few small programs, and you understand the basic principals of object-oriented programming. You have a graduation certificate from an online programming course, proof of attendance at a RailsGirls event, a college transcript, or you've worked through all of the exercises in Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Or you have a body of work on Github I can check out. Bonus: you have used any of these before: RVM, Rspec, git, homebrew, or Bundler.

Education prerequisites: None! Some of the best programmers I know are not college graduates, or even high school graduates! Please don't let that hold you back from applying. I didn't go to school for this stuff; I am entirely an audodidact.

Geographic prerequisites: Remote work is possible later on but at the beginning you must be able to commute to our office in Hampden.

Hardware prerequisites: We're a small company and unfortunately, right now we can't afford to buy you a development machine. Most of us us use OS X but that's not a requirement. You should plan to work in a Unix OS though, so if you're on Windows definitely get something like Virtualbox running a Linux variant.

Time commitment: We are looking to work with people from about 3 to 6 months. We can offer you up to 40 hours of work per week and need a minimum of 20 hours.

Interested? Please fill out an application.

RailsGirlsBaltimore infographic

I really love this awesome infographic that Jess Gartner created for the recent RailsGirls Baltimore event, showing what we learned in organizing it and what the experience was like for everyone involved.

The best thing about it, for me, is that it's a list of "to-dos" for making inclusive events. I feel like there's already a lot of information about what not to-do (although sadly, that information still hasn't reached many members of the tech industry, as Jess' previous infographic shows) and it's nice to get some specific, tactical advice about how to convert good intentions into reality.

Invitation to RailsGirls

I'm helping organize RailsGirls Baltimore on 3/2 to introduce computer programming to girls and women in the Baltimore area. No prior experience is required! It's a fun day of learning new skills in a small group with a coach helping you progress through a series of exercises.

Please help me spread the word as much as possible. We'd like to have as many women attend as possible!

Details are here:

http://railsgirls.com/baltimore

Hope to see you there!

Developing a software education industry in Baltimore

I recorded a video for Technically Baltimore's new series "One Big Idea". My big idea is about creating a new software education industry in Baltimore:


The ideas here build on an earlier post of mine, Towards a New Paradigm for Software Education. They also dovetail nicely with something Anil Dash wrote, The Blue Collar Coder.

Scorecard for Baltimore's startup community

Update: Killer Events went from B- to B

I used Mark Suster's awesome post about building startup communities outside of Silicon Valley to make a scorecard for Baltimore's startup community. I'm writing this off-the-cuff based on my perspective and would be happy to change any of these grades if readers can provide more data:

• A strong pool of tech founders: A. Just go to any meetup or tech event around town, and you'll meet lots of smart technically-minded, entrepreneurial engineers and business people. There are many tech people in and around Baltimore with national and international reputations, and there are many compelling startups around town (too many to name, I'm afraid to leave someone out).
• Local capital: C. There's a lot of capital available in Baltimore but it does feel disorganized, which Mark addressed. We have several incubators and early-stage investment programs now, and things feel a little too diffused. As a step forward, check out this post Dave Troy wrote about what could be achieved if these smaller, individual efforts were combined into something larger. 
• Killer Events: B. We have tons of awesome events (just check out Baltimore Innovation Week's packed calendar) but I don't see them growing enough to attract people from outside of the region without more investment and support from the city's business, municipal, and NGO sectors. For example, Betascape could become "the SXSWi of the east" if the organizers had more funding (kudos to MICA for being such a great host). In general it's hard to find space for compelling events in the city - what if the city started a program to make the convention center available at low cost to innovation community events? Update: I forgot about Baltimore TechBreakfast which is expanding to Columbia and beyond!
• Access to Great Universities: I'll give us an A- because there are a lot of great universities and thus there is a pool of raw talent and ideas. But I don't have a sense that they're teaching much of value to startup companies. Here's what I think they should be teaching. 
• Motivated Champions: B. This is the role I've chosen for myself and there are many other people who have done so as well. But we need more people of stature/fame to get involved, not just grass-roots people like me.
• Local Press: B. This would have been an D a few months ago but now we have Technically Baltimore and Baltimore Weekly and those guys have been killing it. Special thanks to Gus Sentementes, the Sun reporter whose coverage of the tech scene is what moved us from F- to D!
• Alumni Outreach: F. I'm not aware of any particular attempts to do this, though we make an effort to snag people when they are in town.
• Wins: B. Doing pretty good here: Ad.com, Millennial Media, BillMeLater, and more.
• Recycled Capital: B-. Greg Cangialosi and Sean Lane are setting a great example in this regard. Both are using their success to foster a broad range of awesome new enterprises in the city.
• Second-time entrepreneurs: A. Several interesting companies emerged from ad.com including Millennial. I'm starting a business with someone who was early at ad.com and is using the lessons learned there to help us kick ass. Ron Schmelzer is working on an exciting company after several other wins.
• Ability to Attract a Pool of Engineers: B-. The city has a lot to offer young people but we're competing with all of the other cities that have similar assets, where The Wire wasn't filmed. I'd love to see the city launch an initiative like the ones Mark suggested specifically geared toward recruiting innovators to move and build companies here.
• Tent-pole tech companies: Incomplete. We don't have anything on the scale that Mark describes. The closest we have is Advertising.com but it's now a division of AOL and not on the scale of the companies he mentions. They have really accelerated their leadership in the past 12 months by hosting and sponsoring a lot of events, so I'm holding them up as an model of what a tent-pole company could do for us. 

Was I too harsh? Too gentle? Let me know your thoughts.

Giving Away $4500 In Ignition Grants at Ignite Baltimore #11

Just a quick note to alert everyone to the fact that we're giving away $4500 in Ignition Grants at the next Ignite Baltimore. Kate Bladow, Scott Burkholder, and Andrea Snyder have taken over leadership of this project, along with our new fiscal sponsor gb.tc.

If you know someone that's got an idea for a new product, service, or project that would make Baltimore a better place to live and work, please encourage them to apply. More details here.

Also, I recently appeared on gb.tc's weekly podcast discussing the call for proposals to speak at Ignite. In case you're wondering what kinds of talks we're looking for, or if you just want to know what's up with Baltimore tech in general, check out the video of the show:

New ways to help accelerate Baltimore's renaissance

I got a nice email today from one of my favorite Baltimore groups, gb.tc, announcing a new initiative:

...we are adding a new emphasis on bringing the power of technology and entrepreneurship to building a better Baltimore...Our goal is to help connect the innovators and the new ideas with the “powers-that-be” and the resources that could help accelerate Baltimore’s renaissance.

This project is near and dear to my heart. There's been a disconnect between the powers-that-be and the independent hustlers here in town, and gb.tc has cooked up three interesting new projects to change that, excerpted below:

Groundwork - August 10–11 - Over the course of 24 hours (from Friday evening to Saturday), help collect and analyze publicly-available data about Baltimore from a wide variety of sources. We are inviting a diverse mix of technologists, public health researchers, community leaders, and non-profit representatives. Our goal is to identify points of strength and to find opportunities for action and collaboration in neighborhoods, with existing programs, and among talented people from different sectors of Baltimore innovation.

Baltimore UnWIREd - August 24–25 - An unconference to be held on the campus of Johns Hopkins University, UnWIREd will build on findings and tools developed at Groundwork. We will convene innovators and power-brokers from across the region for serious discussion and concrete action. We will identify specific problems, resources, and neighborhoods as focal points.

Start Something - Fall 2012 through Summer 2013 - We will take what we have learned from Groundwork and UnWIREd and tap into the energy and creativity of Baltimore area college students. We will connect talented young people with our innovation community and the mentorship, resources, and tools they need to build sustainable businesses that serve the goals of a greater Baltimore.

I'm particularly excited about the last one. We have a lot of smart people around here and tons of opportunities to solve real-world problems, while making lots of money. I'm looking forward to seeing what a group of these smart people can do when given a little support and mentorship while exploring useful business ideas.

Who owns vacant properties in Baltimore?

I received many ideas for my free software project and ultimately settled on one suggested by Kate Bladow: a tool to help identify potential slumlords in Baltimore. It's specifically designed to help Baltimore Slumlord Watch investigations, though that anonymous blogger has nothing to do with this tool (he or she has to do complete investigations of each property before writing a post). This is more like an experiment to use all available data to identify people and companies who may own a large number of vacant properties.

The tool combines data from three sources:

1. State of Maryland Real Property database: to get a complete list of every property in Baltimore, identified by a block and lot number (this database, unlike #2, allows wildcard searching, which is how we get the complete list). Includes a truncated field listing the owner name.
2. Baltimore City Real Property database: to find the complete owner name and mailing address.
3. Baltimore's Vacant Lots and Vacant Buildings open data sets. The anonymous slumlord watch blogger says that these are not very accurate or up-to-date, but hopefully they are good enough for us to identify who the main offenders are.

I applied a few cleanups and transformations to make the data more useful, and used the excellent Google Refine tool to try and reduce the noise I found in the Owner Name column. Many entities were listed under a variety of spellings, punctuations, and abbreviations, which Google Refine helped me combine. Thanks to Mark Headd for recommending Google Refine to me.

Below you will find a few lists of the top property owners in Baltimore gleaned from these tools.

Important Caveats

1. Some properties are owned by companies using a series of one-up numbered company names (like "N# Inc." or "NB1 Business Trust", "NB2 Business Trust", etc.  I used Google Refine's clustering feature to combine similar names on the assumption that these are probably controlled by the same people. In the cases where I did this kind of grouping, I used sentence case instead of upper case or I replaced digits with the # sign.
2. Many properties are owned by a uniquely-named LLC (like "1 E. Montgomery LLC"). One person or company could own a significant share of the vacant properties in Baltimore via shell corporations like this. One potential way to get around this is to look up the incorporation paperwork for each company (also available as a scrapeable database), but I'm assuming if you're smart enough to use shell corporations you're probably using a different company to be a registered agent. So this technique would probably only help us identify the main registered agents for the vacant property owners in Baltimore.
3. I haven't done a great deal of authenticating or verifying. All I'm trying to do is make this data more discoverable/explorable. Obviously you should do your own homework before acting on any of this information.
4. I was really surprised to see how much property is controlled by the city. Even if the absolute numbers below are inaccurate the relative amount is pretty amazing. I'd like to see the city take some bold leadership on doing something with all of those buildings and lots. How about a revival of the dollar home program?
5. I only focused on properties listed as non-owner occupied by the State of Maryland.
6. The Slumlord Watch blogger says that the city's vacant building data is inaccurate and not up-to-date, so there may be false positives and negatives in the list.

Largest Vacant Property Owners in Baltimore, Grouped by Name

Owner	#  Vacants
Baltimore City	1407
UP# BUSINESS TRUST	38
SS# BUSINESS TRUST	25
JAMES E. CANN	24
NB# Business Trust	24
State of Maryland	19
2008 DRR-ETS, LLC	18
BALTIMORE RETURN FUND, LLC	18
EAST BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT LLC	18
COMPOUND YIELD PLAY, LLC	17
CE REALTY, LLC. & EPHRAIM WEINGARTEN	16
KONA PROPERTIES, LLC	16
CE REALTY, LLC	15
J.A.M. numbered corporations	15
BALTIMORE PREFERRED PROPERTIES LLC	14
DRUID HEIGHTS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION	14
HOLABIRD INVESTMENTS, LLC	14
NEW HORIZON DEVELOPMENT, LLC	14
DOMINION PROPERTIES LLC	13
COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS, LLC	12
M&S JOINT VENTURE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION	12
MAHS-BE HOLDINGS, LLC	12
BALDWIN TRUSTEE, LEROY	11
HARRISON DEVELOPMENT, LLC	11
HUD	11
CHESAPEAKE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC	10
KGB numbered corporations	10
University of Maryland	10
L.A.M.B., INC.	9
REBUILD AMERICA, INC	9
CARTER, NATHAN	8
EQUITY TRUST COMPANY	8
KREISLER, SANFORD	8
LAMB, DERRICK	8
N-#, INC.	8
OAKMONT DESIGN LLC	8
SANDTOWN HABITAT FOR HUMANITY	8
DOMINION RENTALS, LLC	7
GREEN, CARL	7
HARBOUR PORTFOLIO	7
LEO, CAROLINE G.	7
N10 BUSINESS TRUST	7
NEIGHBORHOOD PROPERTIES-4, INC	7
SAUNDERS TERRAINE	7
EAST BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT, INC	6
APP CONSULTING GROUP, LLC	6
DJ LAND CO, LLC & WODA GROUP LLC	6
EMERALD BAY DEVELOPMENT GROUP & ONE, INC.	6
FIRST NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, LLC	6
JOHNSON, MARTIN	6

You can also download the entire list of non-owner-occupied vacant building owners in Baltimore.

Largest Vacant Lot Owners in Baltimore, Grouped by Name

Baltimore City	2926
B&D PHASE III, LLC	64
METRO II OLDHAM, LLC & SUNNYS ASSOCIATES, LLC	42
CAMDEN ASSOCIATES, LLC.	40
HARBORVIEW LIMITED PARTNERSHIP NO. #	35
State of Maryland	32
LOWMAN ST.,LLC	31
Oblate Sisters of Providence	27
BG&E	23
COMPANY, LLC & FEDERAL HILL HOLDING & SCC CANYON II, LLC	23
ATLAS MD I SPE, LLC & BB&T BANK (CREO), ATTN: T. GEORG	19
J & J PARTNERSHIP, INC.	19
Baptist Church	18
SANDTOWN HABITAT FOR HUMANITY	18
NANTICOKE INVESTMENT CO., LLC	17
L.A.M.B., INC.	15
CSX TRANSPORTATION, INC. & TAX DEPARTMENT	13
DRUID HEIGHTS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION	13
SINGER PARK & PLAY, INCORPORATED	13
STATION PLACE LLC	13
TRIMARK MANAGEMENT	13
ASSOCIATION, INC & MCHENRY POINTE HOMEOWNERS	12
Benedictine Society of Baltimore	12
CHESAPEAKE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY & INC	12
JUBB JR, WALTER H & JUBB, EDWARD H	12
CASTLEWOOD COMMUNITIES, LLC	11
MOUNT SINAI BAPTIST CHURCH & OF BALTIMORE CITY	11
MARYLAND JOCKEY CL	10
CONVENTION AND AUXILIARIES & OF BALTIMORE, INC. & UNITED BAPTIST MISSIONARY	9
DUNN, GREG	9
RIVERSIDE WORK FORCE LLC	9
BALTIMORE URBAN LEAGUE, & INC.,THE	8
C&P TELEPHONE COMP	8
CORPORATE SECRETARY, AMTRAK & NATIONAL RAILROAD & PASSENGER CORPORATION	8
DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION & DRUID HEIGHTS COMMUNITY & JACQUELYN D CORNISH	8
FRP HOLLANDER 95, LLC	8
HOLABIRD PARK APTS. INC	8
MUELLER HOMES, INC.	8
NEWSTAR DEVELOPMENT AT CANTON & PEAKS, LLC	8
SCARFIELD SR, FRANK D	8
THE KCR DEVELOPMENT GROUP & SPICER'S RUN HOMEOWNER ASSOCIATION
BALTIMORE SCRAP CORP.	7
BRIGHTON DEVELOPMENT GROUP & LLC	7
CHURCH, THE & VESTRY OF MOUNT CALVARY	7
FLAG HOUSE RENTAL I, L.P. & METRO PLAZA II	7
FOWLKES, ROBIN	7
PARADIGM BUILDERS, LLC & RICHARD MIRSKY - OFFIT KURMAN	7
URBAN HEALTH INSTITUTE OF & WASHINGTON, THE	7
CANN JAMES E	6
CHURCH OF THE REDEEMED OF THE & LORD, INC, THE	6

You can also download the entire list of non-owner-occupied vacant lot owners in Baltimore.

The Raw Data
All data used to create the above table can be downloaded from Github, including the raw CSV data.

The Code

It's creative-commons licensed and posted on Github. It's pretty raw and unfactored. I ran it all from irb. It needs to be converted into a Rake task or other command-line friendly, totally-automated package.

Next Steps

• We could get this up and running on ScraperWiki to have the data constantly updated.
• We could run an Amazon Mechanical Turk project to create an up-to-the-minute database of vacant houses in Baltimore, using Google Street View. We could just ask each worker to use street view to make an estimate of whether the house was vacant or not. I'm sure there would be some inaccuracy but the data ought to be good enough to help further investigations.

What is the tech community and who belongs to it?

We had some breaking news in Baltimore's tech scene last week: Sharon Webb was replaced as the head of the Greater Baltimore Technology Council (GBTC) by Jason Hardebeck. Sharon was a friend of mine, and I really bought into her plan to reinvigorate the council and make it more relevant to tech companies. As part of that effort she and GBTC board president Jason Pappas recruited me to be the Entrepreneur-in-Residence. To be clear, I'm not speaking for the GBTC in this post.

The news brought out an extraordinary amount of confusion, hurt feelings, and acrimony, expressed in social media channels. Neal Shaffer nailed it when he tweeted: "It occurs to me that the GBTC convo isn't really about GBTC at all. It's about a community with momentum coming to a crossroads."

That crossroads involves a few questions I hope to address here:

1. What is the Baltimore tech community and who is part of it?
2. Do we need to a group like the GBTC to further develop the tech sector in Baltimore?
3. Are Baltimore tech events infected with an unseemly degree of enthusiasm for startups at the expense of other kinds of companies?

WHAT IS THE BALTIMORE TECH COMMUNITY AND WHO IS PART OF IT?

I want apologize to Elizabeth Eadie and everyone else I offended with a comment I made in the heat of the moment during an online chat (you can read about it here) in which I implied that service businesses are not as valuable to the economy as other kinds of businesses. That was a dumb thing to say. When this chat was taking place we were under the misapprehension that the new GBTC leadership was steering away from supporting entrepreneurs and startups in favor of more established, dues-paying large companies, which fortunately turned out to be completely untrue. I was venting my frustration that the startup sector, which I think is very undeveloped, seemed to be getting short shrift. I was actually responding to the disdain for startups I perceived in Elizabeth's earlier post on this subject, a disdain I often hear from independent technologists around Baltimore. 

Now that I've had a few days to cool down, here's how I really feel: everyone who makes technology of any kind in Baltimore is a member of the tech community. Too often we unconsciously emphasize "software companies" or "startup companies" when speaking of the "tech community", but that might be because software people and startup people are  better organized or more vocal than other technologists around town; I'm really not sure who our counterparts in the biotech world are, for example, not because they aren't valued members of the local technology scene but simply because (as far as I know) there's no one blogging about Baltimore biotech, and there aren't that many public biotech booster events.

I also think that the tech community includes companies that make heavy use of technology. Sharon Webb introduced me to a great example of this kind of company on the cutting edge of maritime logistics technology: Vane Brothers. I'd love to go to a meetup where they show off the cool stuff they are doing to disrupt the shipping industry!

DO WE NEED A GROUP LIKE THE GBTC TO DEVELOP THE TECH SECTOR?

The GBTC lost a lot of relevance in the past few years, and their board members know it. Some in the Baltimore Tech Facebook group and in other forums question the very existence of the GBTC, and they are right to do so: the GBTC has some impressive resources including a budget; a small full-time staff; and a large and well-connected board of directors. Have we as a society made a good investment of that social and financial capital?

I think Tom Loveland explained it best on Facebook:

"...sometimes you need an association. Like to fight a tech tax. Or to make sure DBED supports IT and startups instead of just bio and big business. (All that invisible stuff you never see.) And that City Hall remembers us, too. (In her State of the City address last year our Mayor announced I think only one bit of new spending, and it went to the ETC.) And though dozens of smaller events and get-togethers, ad hoc to organized, are fantastic, occasionally it's a very good thing to hold a giant celebration of our community. And to be all it can, a community needs to leverage its old farts and winners, those with wisdom and/or connections, who can assist the next generation. Often it's the association staff who sees a need and knows who can help and can make the connection. The up-and-comers in the throes probably don't know who to ask, and often don't even know to ask, or that awesome help is available."

So, just because GBTC has lost its edge doesn't mean that we should get rid of trade associations altogether. I have personally benefitted from GBTC as a connecting, community-building organization the whole time I've lived here: GBTC was the first sponsor of my first tech event in Baltimore and also played an instrumental role in making the first Baltimore Hackathon so successful. I met a key mentor at a GBTC Face2Face dinner, and I always make many new connections at TechNite events.

ARE BALTIMORE TECH EVENTS INFECTED WITH AN UNSEEMLY DEGREE OF ENTHUSIASM FOR STARTUPS AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHER KINDS OF COMPANIES?

Elizabeth wrote "...I find the tech-start-up-entrepreneur-scene to be toxic and exhausting." She feels put off by the fact that "Too many people in the tech scene are trying to make a bazillion dollars overnight." Elsewhere on Elizabeth's blog Jason Rhodes echoes the sentiment when he says he "...never felt quite at home in the start-up focused Bmore tech scene. Like a lot of the people, but it seems to be focused heavily on things I’m less interested in as far as starting my own company, etc."

I have a mixed reaction to this. First of all, I now have two small kids and so I don't go to many tech events any more. Enough comments like these appeared enough on Twitter and Facebook to make me believe it must have become a common experience, which sucks.

Yet in my opinion, the primary and perhaps the only problem that our tech community suffers is a shortage of startups! Who are all of these "start-up focused" people trying to make "a bazillion dollars"? What companies have they started? There's a pretty small handful of startup companies around here, and all of the entrepreneurs I know trying to get a startup going are not the sort of craven, venal people that Elizabeth and her colleagues hold in contempt. In fact they are some of the most generous, open-minded people around, and they are motivated by a desire to change the world and make something really cool, while incidentally making money. Purely greedy assholes don't really want to live in Baltimore and we're better off for it!

Maybe it has to do with differing ideas of what a startup is. Startups are considered to be glamorous, shiny things in tech culture, and people who aren't doing them might feel jealous of the attention that startups get - especially when you read about a startup company raising tons of money or press coverage on the basis of zero revenue. If I was the owner of a small, profitable tech company in Baltimore, I'm sure I'd feel the same way! Instead of using superficialities to define what a startup is, I propose we stick to Eric Ries' excellent definition: "A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty."

So if you're in a company and experiencing extreme uncertainty (not knowing who your customers are, exactly what problems you're going to solve, and whether you can make money solving them), congratulations, you're in a startup. It would be very wrong to say you're somehow better as a person or that your pursuit is more noble than someone else who is not experiencing that uncertainty, but it's also very wrong to dismiss such companies the way some people in the Baltimore tech scene have been doing. It's wrong to say we shouldn't be bending over backwards to help people who are considering making the leap of faith required to do a startup.

Why is it wrong? Because with this risk comes the potential for great reward, both for the entrepreneur and for the entire city. Startups can become large, wealth-creating entities in a way that few other kinds of businesses can. Startups make their founders and early employees rich, and those people can then turn around and reinvest in the city as philanthropists, entrepreneurs, or angel investors. We are missing this "virtuous cycle" in Baltimore (but keep your eye on Greg Cangialosi who is starting a new revolution of the cycle). The only way to get it moving is to get more people doing startups. I don't apologize for encouraging people to consider startups because I find it a rewarding lifestyle, quite apart from the potential to make lots of money (which is nice also!), and because a crop of awesome startups would become a rising tide lifting all of our boats. I want small web businesses in Baltimore to have more local clients with deep pockets! Baltimore with a few more companies like LivingSocial or Zappos or Millenial Media or Advertising.com or BillMeLater would be an incredible place to live no matter what your occupation!

I take this charge fairly personally since I don't think anyone is waving the flag for startups in Baltimore harder than I am. If I'm doing something that makes you feel excluded or unwanted please let me know and I will fix it. I'm wondering if there's maybe a small crop of "wantrepreneurs" who make a lot of noise about startups but who aren't "for real"; please don't count them as emblematic of startup life in Baltimore or emblematic for how I feel.

IN CONCLUSION

I've written a lot about Baltimore's potential to become more of a prominent technology hub than it already is. It would be crazy to diminish any part of it; we need everyone here being productive doing what they love and not wasting time squabbling like we've been doing. Like Tom Loveland, I see an important role for a trade group like the GBTC, and that's why I volunteer there. I liked Sharon Webb and was sad to see her go but I'm willing to give Jason Hardebeck the benefit of the doubt. Ever forward!

Towards a New Paradigm for Software Education

I posted a new essay to the OSI-Baltimore blog called Baltimore should become a software education leader:

The term “programming” connotes an analytical discipline, something derived from mathematics or engineering, and that’s how most schools teach it: as the domain of computer science. But computer science is only a part of what software makers do. Advances in computer power have made computer science less applicable in the day-to-day work of programmers because there’s less need to keep track of “ones and zeroes.” Making software has simply become a lot more fun than you might remember if you were ever forced to study it. 

These advances open the door for many different kinds of people to get involved in the software industry. Newcomers have launched a software craftsmanship movement addressing issues such as: how do we make something truly useful? How do we make it a joy to use? What can we learn from the worlds of art, design, psychology, typography, and architecture? Where you once had programmers thinking of themselves as scientists or engineers, you now have programmers who think of themselves as artisans.

Poet and computer scientist Richard P. Gabriel describes a vision of how we might train programmers as craftspeople in his essay “Master of Fine Arts in Software,” in which he suggests we emphasize the creation of software as a performance instead of as a body of knowledge to master. 

I'm very hopeful for this approach (which I also discussed a few weeks ago on WYPR's Maryland Morning) because I think it's a straightforward, exciting way to boost the number people able to compete for good jobs in the current economy. Read Marc Andreessen's recent op-ed essay "Why Software Is Eating the World" for more details on why this is going to be extremely important not just for Baltimore but for every city that wants to be economically competitive.

My New Gig at the Greater Baltimore Technology Council

The Greater Baltimore Technology Council (GBTC) recently announced that I've started working with them as a volunteer "Entrepreneur-in-Residence". I've been good-naturedly teased about it a bit and had a few people ask me, "so what does that mean"? Many of my friends don't know what the GBTC is or why it's here. Here's my quick explanation.

The GBTC is a nonprofit with a mission to help grow the technology sector here in Maryland. If you've been reading my blog for a while you know what a big deal that is to me. I love living here and I love building software, so anything that helps grow the tech sector is near and dear to my heart. The GBTC was the first organization to sponsor Ignite Baltimore, helping to get the word out for that first event, and they have been a sponsor ever since.

Since the group was founded in the late 90's the tech sector has changed. Today almost every company is a tech company, and many technology practitioners no longer work for companies at all. More people are in business for themselves. More projects get accomplished via the "Hollywood model" of federated teams of independent contractors coming together for a fixed amount of time. Infrastructure costs have dropped rapidly, making information technology in particular far more affordable - practically free in some cases.

The GBTC leadership is making bold plans to modernize the organization to keep pace with these changes; in fact they are poised to put the GBTC on the cutting edge of these changes, making it a dynamic organization relevant to everyone in the tech game: freelancers, entrepreneurs, small companies, big companies, local governments, education institutions, even other nonprofits.

It's early days for this transformation, but they've already taken a very bold step: they are hiring an Innovation Community Manager, an idea I've been advocating for awhile. That person's main job will be to support the grass-roots tech organization efforts that many of us have been pursuing for years. I can't think of a more effective way for the GBTC to advance its mission.

My job as EIR at GBTC is to help craft this transformation plan in a way that helps my fellow-entrepreneurs. My fellows include many more constituencies than simply other Internet startup people: we want the new GBTC to help everyone in the area who's trying to start something innovative. You might be working in a big company or at a struggling nonprofit, or in an established small business and looking to grow. Whatever the key ingredients for your continued success are, we want to help provide them. My role to that end will include advocacy and writing (like this blog post), attending staff meetings, giving feedback to different ideas, and generally just lending a hand to all of the GBTC's activities.

I don't want to steal any more thunder from the cool stuff they're working on, but I do want to say as an entrepreneur it's a great learning experience for me as I watch the GBTC board and CEO Sharon Webb make a big transformation in an institution like this. It's like they are founding the group all over again while it's still operating. There are lots of stakeholders, a heritage to preserve, and uncertainty about which choices to make to ensure future success. Very similar to the sort of environment I'm in with my own venture!

Should we all move to Silicon Valley?

I keep thinking about this exit interview that Brian Sierakowski did with Paul Capestany, who is leaving Baltimore to move to San Francisco (joining the likes of other smart former Baltimore/Maryland transplants Patti Chan, Clarence Wooten, Paul Singh, Jared Goralnick, and others). He wants to start a high-risk/high-reward consumer Internet company.

I respect Paul and count him a friend. He's done a lot for the cause of entrepreneurship in the city and we all owe him our thanks! I wish him luck. And I can really understand where he's coming from. San Francisco is a cool place for web entrepreneurs to be.

All things being equal, if Paul's dream is to start a big, risky consumer Internet company, he may have an edge by starting it in San Francisco. If you're in a smaller, less-connected city like Baltimore competing head to head with a company based there, you may be at a serious disadvantage (Paul Graham makes the point in an essay about startup hubs).

But are all things equal? Let's break it down.

People in San Francisco Are More Risk-Tolerant

Paul says he can't find enough risk-takers here, but is the talent hunt any easier out there? I assume the main types of people he needs are technical cofounders and designers willing to work for equity in lieu of cash. Those are in short supply across the world, no more so than in San Francisco. Here are two anecdotes:

1. I recently had a vivid conversation with someone starting a company in San Francisco with every advantage you can think of: prominent name-brand angel investors, a beautiful downtown office space, cutting-edge technology, early traction, etc. But this person had interviewed over and a hundred people so far and could not find anyone skilled willing to work for part equity and part salary. Pretty much every day you can find an article on tech blogs about the crazy salaries that startups and established companies are throwing at web practitioners. Competition for talent is fierce. And since all you really need for most ideas is one smart, hard-working coder,  I wonder what the real odds are for finding such a person out there vs. somewhere in Maryland where the community is more close-knit.
2. I've worked with well-respected, experienced entrepreneurs who have sold multiple companies here in Baltimore and in Austin. Despite their track records, rich network of connections, and geographic advantages, they've still had to work hard to secure investment and find talented developers. My point is that all of the problems outlined in Paul's interview are going to exist in any city, even for proven entrepreneurs. If being in Silicon Valley makes those problems 5% more tractable, maybe that's a worthwhile edge to have. But is it really 5%? Who knows? 

Also, no matter where you live you can still get people to build your prototype for not much cash. There's a lot you can do absent a cofounder to develop and test your ideas in the marketplace. See Sivers and Freedman.

It's also worth pointing out that successful Internet companies get built all the time that are based elsewhere. 37signals, LivingSocial, BillMeLater, OtherInbox, Etsy, bit.ly, OpenDNS, Advertising.com, and Millenial Media are a few that jump out at me without thought.

Investors in San Francisco Are More Risk Tolerant

I'm sure this is true, if only because they have more experience with startups and risk. Yet I wonder if it's really relevant. Starting a web company and getting it to the point where your business model is proven, is practically free. Growing a company from that point ("scaling it" in startup parlance) is what costs real money, and it seems vastly easier to raise money for growth than for starting from scratch, especially in the era of AngelList. And mid-Atlantic companies with traction and have real growth prospects can definitely raise money: in our own backyard, LivingSocial, AwayFind, and Shortmail have raised plenty of money from around the country. Locally, I got to meet a lot of angel investors while I was helping fundraise for Startup City, and I found some of them were quite risk-tolerant and ready to commit to funding us on the spot.

Believe me, I've been there

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm picking on Paul or others who have made that choice. I've never felt the urge to move to San Francisco but I was oft-tempted to move to Austin when I was working full-time on OtherInbox. Paul is right that there's something extremely stimulating about being around people who care about the same things you do and have the same imagination you do. It's just not mainstream (yet) for people to be starting companies and (especially as a man) it can be difficult to make friends with people lacking the same obsessive dream. It's just a really nice thing to have in common with your friends.

This may be the most decisive factor making people want to move. We imagine that every coffeeshop we walk into over there will be like the hallway track at SXSW. I know I've dreamed that dream! I once sent Dave Troy a distressed email while sitting in my office in Austin, in a moment of particular geographic jealousy, whose contents were pretty close to Paul's exit interview. I wish I could find Dave's response but it was basically what he later wrote in this post: "Being in 'a' place is more important than being in 'the' place". I take great comfort from that thought. I sometimes fear I've become an apologist for Baltimore, a storied, troubled city to be sure but a place which needs no apology. It's a place in a way that Silicon Valley never can be (have you ever met anyone who grew up there or lived there for their whole lives?). Baltimore has changed me in a million ways, becoming a part of me and I part of it; I'm supported by wonderful friends and family, as well as professional colleagues who form a great (albeit small) community of innovators. That's a huge asset, a massive competitive advantage, one that I was undervaluing until I wrote this essay.

What is your actual goal?

If your goal is to build and own a thriving business producing an awesome, innovative software product that helps helps the world, while building wealth for your family, your employees, your investors, and your community, then I think you absolutely do not need to move from wherever you're living. You just need to think about what sorts of businesses are going to work in your town. There are many, many niches out there that you can dominate without being in California. I would look for unsexy, comfortable industries in your area where there are many competitors but little competition.

I wish everyone thinking about moving to the Valley could spend some time with my friend Chris Ashworth here in Baltimore. In terms of personal happiness, self-actualization, and all-around awesome lifestyle, he's by far the most successful entrepreneur I know. He started Figure53, a wonderful company that makes software for sound designers used in theaters around the world, including Broadway and the Olympics. He makes a good living at it, employs six people, and is very obviously having a great time.

If you absolutely are committed to starting a consumer Internet company I can see the argument for moving to San Francisco, but I would carefully examine your assumptions about what's going to be easier and harder for you when you get there. I personally would try and launch the company right where I am, because when you demonstrate traction you'll have a much easier time solving the "talent + investment" problem in whatever city you're in. People will start seeking you out!

I do think there's a lot to be said for living in a city, any city, because of the intangible benefits that accrue from density (well explored in the book "Where Good Ideas Come From"). You get better ideas if you're mixing with smart people regularly. Here in Baltimore there are a ton of meetups; tons of people with web and mobile and design skills; and tons of companies that make great money using Internet technology. I'm sure most cities are like that.

Good luck!

Paul is a super smart, charismatic guy who is going to be a big success wherever he goes. This essay wasn't meant to try and talk him out of it; I only meant to explore his very understandable motives in light of my own decision to stay put.  I'm sorry to see him go, and I hope someday he and I are sitting on the boards of each other's companies! In the meantime if anyone in San Francisco reads this blog, you better get in touch with this guy now before he gets too connected to have time for you!

Update On the New Company I'm Starting

Back in January I announced my plans to start a new company. I had a lot of nice people contact me to wish me luck or to propose collaborations, so in case anyone is interested, here's how things have been going!

I spent a lot of time brainstorming various business ideas. One of the best things I did was take a train up to Pennsylvania to meet with one of my role models, angel investor and renaissance hacker Gabriel Weinberg. He strongly encouraged me to pursue the solo founder route and also helped me narrow down my list of ideas to 3-4 stronger candidates. He also really encouraged me to start building things, one after another, and keep learning: this process would very likely lead me to an interesting business (vs. trying to create an elaborate business plan and sink years into just one product). I also had several people pitch me on their own cool ideas.

By the end of this process I was overwhelmed! I was really surprised by what helped: I made a mind map of all the things I was considering working on. Forcing myself to create a visual taxonomy of ideas made something very clear which I had not been conscious of. I learned that I'm only interested in building products where:

• I can charge money up front (vs. things that depend on advertising at scale) 
• There's a chance to learn about new technology, or challenge my technical skills in some way
• The problem I'm solving is something I can be passionate about

Those are super obvious criteria but I had not laid them out ahead of time, and I had put too much emphasis on the first one at the expense of the last one. Now I think all three are of equal importance.

I spent a couple of months working seriously on two of my ideas. One of them I bailed out on after realizing I didn't care enough about the problem. The second one I have postponed for awhile, because it's a video game, something very cool that I haven't seen elsewhere in the market, but I'm not sure how interested I am in the games industry. The game was very exciting to work on because of the technology involved (I used all kinds of awesome HTML5 goodness like the ImpactJS engine and websockets, and created a RailsConf tutorial based on what I learned, which someone translated into Russian!). But I was less enthusiastic about the product as a full-fledged business.

A couple of months ago I met Tom Ainsley, an entrepreneur based out of Baltimore's Emerging Technology Center (ETC). We became friendly through various tech networking events like Ignite Baltimore, and also because we're both members of the ETC's ambassador council. He had a great idea for a product that hit all three of my criteria. I don't want to say what it is yet, not because I believe in keeping ideas secret or staying in stealth mode, but because I want to have the business fully up and running for awhile before we publicly launch it. Whatever minimal "social media juice" I have I want to save for that day! Check out "Don't Launch" for an explanation of this strategy.

Besides thinking it was a good idea, Tom brought something to the table that almost nobody in his position does: he had already had a contractor build a prototype, and he already had paying customers for that prototype. Most people who pitch new web business ideas to potential cofounders or to angel investors have not put any capital into their idea (like Tom did when he hired that contractor) and as such they don't seem very "for real". Also, many have a lot of unexamined assumptions about how the idea will make money (something that's very obvious for Tom's product).

You can create the "Tom effect" for yourself without spending a lot of money, by the way. I recommend you outsource development of your prototype idea using Derek Siver's excellent guide. You might also consider teaching yourself to code something. Either one of these things is a way to prove you are "for real". Here's more advice about how to "earn a cofounder".

Tom and I spent some time discussing the idea and getting to know one another over beers at the Charles Village Pub, and eventually we decided to go into business together! I'm rebuilding his prototype as a minimum-viable product now, using Rails and running everything on Heroku's awesome new Celadon Cedar stack. I don't want to say more about the product right now publicly, but if you meet me in person I'd be glad to give you more details!

I'd still like to try being a solo founder some day, but in this process I've learned something very important: as passionate as I am about all facets of entrepreneurship, I'm most interested in technology development. What gets me most excited and engaged is using technology to build things that solve real problems. So for now I'd like to specialize in being a CTO/technical co-founder. That seems to be a sweet spot for me. I'm grateful to have teamed up with a talented businessperson like Tom so I can focus on the most personally meaningful work.

I will be posting more regular updates as things progress, so stay tuned!

Ideas for making cities more innovative and fun

A few weeks ago I spoke about ideas for making Baltimore a more innovative and fun place. My thesis was that we should be placing a whole lot of "small bets" that would benefit residents of the city instead of investing in mega one-off projects intended to attract itinerant visitors.

Why I Work in Baltimore

Here's the video from my recent Ignite for a Better Baltimore talk, "Baltimore: A Great Place to Pickup Ideas and Run With Them".


The slides are posted here.

Innovation Community Manager

I've got a little something posted at the OSI Baltimore Audacious Ideas blog today:

Baltimore is experiencing a renaissance of ideas and entrepreneurship driven from the bottom-up; with a little support from the top-down, this renaissance has the potential to transform our economy. I challenge Baltimore’s economic development organizations to invest in this promising trend by sponsoring a new “Innovation Community Manager” staff position charged with supporting the community leading this transformation.

I've already had one business owner contact me to brainstorm some way his company could help us better organize events, so the idea is already bearing fruit! Full details are over at the OSI blog.