Social Networking, Baltimore style
Photographed by Kirsten Beckerman
Entrepreneur and social organizer Dave Troy was in the middle of welcoming 75 or so people to BarCamp Baltimore on June 20 when an audience member suddenly called out a question.
“What’s the hash tag for today?”
It’s something that wouldn’t have been asked just two years ago, before the advent of Twitter, the online messaging and social networking service that invites folks to send out (i.e., “tweet”) short 140-character communiqués to their “followers” (friends, professional contacts, fans, etc.). The questioner, like many in the room, was armed with a laptop and smartphone and planned to “tweet” about BarCamp throughout the day. He needed to know the hash tag so he could label his tweets accordingly .
After Troy offered the answer— the hash tag was “#bcbmore”— he went on to explain how BarCamp, which is known as an “unconference,” would unfold. “The idea is you get a bunch of smart people together, they suggest a bunch of topics they’re interested in talking about, you group them together and make up a schedule,” said Troy. Inspired by similar “unconferences” in California, Troy organized BarCamp Baltimore with several other people in the tech community and advertised it solely through online social networking sites. Word traveled fast and far enough to bring 75 people out to an auditorium at the University of Baltimore on a Saturday morning— one high school student even came down from Pennsylvania.
During the next 30 minutes, Troy read off the topics people had scribbled on sheets of paper during the earlier coffee hour, and the group voted on them one by one, ultimately scheduling sessions on everything from the future of journalism in Baltimore, to how neighborhood associations can better communicate with their members, to cloud computing, to the Iran elections, to how entrepreneurs can band together to accelerate social change in Baltimore.
Sure, some of the sessions were pretty tech-oriented, and, sure, the majority of folks in the room were either Web developers, programmers or nerds of some ilk. But some were not. And that’s exactly what Troy and others in Baltimore’s burgeoning lively and growing social networking scene are working for. Cross-pollination. Sideways thinking. Connections. Change.
If all this sounds remarkably up-with-people, it is. Unabashedly so. In our doom-and-gloom economy, Baltimore’s social networking scene— and ones like it in cities everywhere— is a bright spot: people with a can-do attitude harnessing the power of technology to create organizations that they hope will not only make money, but also help make change. Just in the past year, local folks have created a wave of groups— Beehive Baltimore, Outlet Baltimore, Refresh Bmore, Bootstrap Maryland— that use online social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook to facilitate offline gatherings where people exchange knowledge and ideas and create community.
Remember when many of us worried that online communica-tion tools like e-mail would end face-to-face contact, leaving us all isolated in front of our computer screens? “We’re seeing the opposite of that,” says Troy. At 37, Troy has been working in social networking for 20-odd years (yes, you heard right), starting with a bulletin board system (BBS was the precursor to the Internet) that he ran from his Arnold, Md., home when he was a high school sophomore. His handle was “toad” (which became the name of the computer company and Internet service provider he started later) and every so often “toad” and the several hundred Baltimore-area folks who used the BBS got together in person. (At the time they didn’t know they were having what today is called a “meetup” or “tweetup.”)
“The difference between that world and now is that world was all geeks, all the time, by definition,” says Troy, now a software consultant who has developed, among other things, Twitter Vote Report, a tool to track conditions at polling places during the last presidential election, and TwitterVision and Flickrvision, software applications that map traffic on both Twitter and Flickr. “The beauty of the last couple of years is that we’re using these tools to organize ‘normal people.’ Finding like communities of interest is so much easier now. It’s inspired people to create things and start groups they wouldn’t have before.”
Think of it as a sort of virtuous cycle or positive feedback loop in which online networks coalesce into offline communities, which coagulate into events, which then spark more online communities. The community, just like the social networking tools that link it, is pretty non-hierarchical and non-centralized, which means it’s literally open to anyone and everyone who wants to join. Troy estimates that about 10,000 people in the Baltimore area participate in Twitter.
Less than a week after BarCamp, nearly 300 people stuffed themselves into The Windup Space on North Avenue for the third installment of Ignite Baltimore, a popular event in which 16 people get five minutes each to speak to Baltimore about a topic they’re passionate about. Mike Subelsky, the event’s co-founder, opened the evening with an explicit mission statement: “The emphasis is on networking. We want to catalyze a reaction between the different scenes in Baltimore.” No need for the hash tag question to be asked this time. Subelsky announced it was “#IB3,” adding, “If you don’t know what a hash tag is, you’re at the perfect event to find out.”
During the next few hours the crowd heard “lightning talks” on everything from the power of improv theater to theories of Web design to urban trees to eavesdropping to “The Archimedes Palimpsest” (a famous manuscript in the collection of the Walters Art Museum) to the meaning of life. (Hint: It’s life.) Not every talk was compelling, but together they provided a cornucopia of ideas from a variety of characters and disciplines, making Baltimore seem like an interesting place full of inspiring people.
Subelsky, a Web programmer, entrepreneur and co-founder of e-mail organization service OtherInbox.com, said he approached Patti Chan, one of the founders of the local site 600block.com, about starting Ignite after attending SocialDevCamp East in May 2008.
“I was amazed to see how many people showed up who were interested in the same things I was. That event is more technically focused, and I wanted to see if we could create something similar with the entire creative community,” says Subelsky. (Smalltimore alert: Subelsky is married to Style senior editor Laura Wexler.) “We hope to catalyze change and growth in Baltimore by mixing up a bunch of smart people who don’t get to interact on a daily basis and giving them 16 conversation starters.”
Each of the three Ignite events has been packed to capacity at The Windup Space, so the event is moving to the Walters Art Museum for Ignite No. 4 on Oct. 22. And on Nov. 5, Troy and Subelsky, and a team of others, will put on TEDxMidAtlantic, a regional version of the renowned Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference that began in 1984 and posts the talks given at its annual conferences online at ted.com. There you can listen to 18-minute talks from architect Daniel Libeskind, environmentalist Al Gore, graphic novelist Ben Katchor and first lady Michelle Obama. That Baltimore was selected to host a TEDx conference reflects the thriving community that already exists, and will no doubt offer a huge injection of prestige, energy and inspiration.
Noting the new developments— groups, ideas, connections— happening around town on a daily basis, Troy says, “There’s a burgeoning sense of optimism about Baltimore that I haven’t felt in a few years.”
