Monday, May 12, 2008

SocialDevCampEast recap

SocialDevCampEast on Saturday was a blast.  Lots of talk about building up the "Amtrak corridor" running from DC to Boston as one unified, tech-ified region.  The talks people gave were interesting (I even got to do one on my experiences with Amazon Web Services), but for me the most valuable experiences took place in between sessions and at the after-party held at Brewer's Art.  

I met several cool DC, MD, and VA entrepreneurs which was really invigorating.  I found out about some new blogs that I need to be reading, including eastcoastblogging.com, written by the creator of the newly-launched MyDropBin.com. 

I also saw first-hand the value of Twitter, which I'm very late to the party on.  I don't know that many people in my own circle who were using it, but after seeing how it was fostering the collaboration among people in the conference environment, I'm sold, especially if you have something client-side that checks tweets for you (my friend Brian Lyles aka Smarticus recommended Twitterific, which works great).  So you can now catch me @subelsky.

Thanks to the sponsors and organizers for a great event; I'll be at the next one for sure.

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Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Startup community in Baltimore

I just found about a very interesting Barcamp called SocialDevCamp East planned in Baltimore on Saturday, just a few miles south of my house. It's very heartening to see enthusiasm building for a tech community here on the east coast and this has gotten me thinking about the Baltimore startup community in general. Below are some notes on startup life in Baltimore.




  • Here are some Baltimore startups I know about:




    I'm sure there are more; send me some and I'll add them to the list.


  • I've talked to many other Baltimore entrepreneurs with ideas in various stages of development, and there are lots of hackers here working remotely (or commuting to DC and Northern Virginia) on startups. We're also the home of advertising.com which employs a lot of smart people and brings a lot of talent to the area.


  • I meet a lot of cool hackers through the local Ruby on Rails meetup.


  • One of my favorite blogs is written by a Baltimorean, Paul Barry. He's a Ruby on Rails expert, but has in no way drunk the Kool Aid. He's got plenty of love for Java and Scala and whatever else gets the job done.


  • I've been dreaming for awhile about organizing a "Baltimore Demo Night" where all of us could gather and show off our wares, get feedback, and so on. Who's down for that?

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