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.

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.

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!