by Ross Karchner rosskarchner@gmail.com
I’ve lived in Northeastern and Central PA, Rochester NY, and the Washington DC area. I’ve worked in customer support, web development, and IT.
Everything posted on this blog is my personal opinion and under absolutely no circumstances does it represent the views of my employer or its clients, except perhaps by coincidence.
Don’t make me say it again.
This is based on no real information, and includes events and groups I haven’t participated with, but I submit to you that the graphic below is a *reasonable* snapshot of the local tech community, even with at least two notable blind-spots (Enterprise IT and Government Everything).
Also note that the two axis I’ve chosen do not represent any sort of value judgement. I personally find the stuff on the right more interesting, but I’m glad it all exists.
(I’ve opened up discussion on the chart itself over on the network)
Here’s what I see: a local technology community that is as diverse, vital, and idiodyncratic as the place where it lives. I don’t think it’s broken or deficient, and even if it was "broken", it’s so big and so crazy that any idea for fixing it is as likely to work as any solution for "fixing" an ecosystem.
I don’t mean to pick on Jimmy, but his recent post Do We Lack Cohesion? shows the same symptom I see with other people who spend s lot of time at the "left-side", network-y events: they define the "tech community" as the small slice they care about. Most often what they really mean is the startup community, the web developer community, or both.
The point I’m trying to make is: please, everyone, just stop doing that. Yes, if you slice a piece of bread you have two new things, both called "bread"— but if you slice the local tech community along lines of interest or agenda, you can’t call that new thing you’ve defined "The DC Tech Community". It’s a subset of the larger thing.
Please? Just call it something else.
Back to Jimmy’s post, what he’s suggesting is an overarching organization to help avoid split audiences (where there are multiple simultaneous events that a person might be interested in) to improve cohesion in (wait for it…) the DC Tech Community. If he really means the entire technology community, then he’s crazy to even attempt to impose order on the whole thing. If (as I suggest above) he really means just a certain class of events, then it’s a great idea. Yeah, someone ought to make sure that Tech Cocktail and NextDC and Social Media Club and RefreshDC aren’t scheduled on top of each other. I think he’s off-target in including the blogger meetup in his example (there are some tech people who go, but it’s a group that is mostly uninterested in the other events mentioned), but it doesn’t detract from the need he has identified.
Just don’t call it the DC Tech Community ;)
Comments
Ross, you took a lot of time to put together this graphic and have added a great deal of \clarity to one of the chief problems with trying to find a common voice here in DC. I think Jimmy has best intentions in his move towards cohesion but you’ve identified a very core problem with that.
There is something to be said for trying to give more influence to our community (whatever one wants to call it) both for us to be able to make positive (social media, tech, political, whatever) changes within the greater DC area and to help attract and retain talent (and respect) for DC.
Your graphic demonstrates what I wouldn’t consider a unique problem. San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and other tech hubs (yes, I’m calling DC one) have a wide range of technology talent, social media talent, startup industry, business networking, etc. Even if only one segment within our community/ies is to develop more structure, it could do us some good.
Thanks for helping to explain the situation better, it will constructively help us to move forward or pause with more information in hand.
Heh Ross,
This is a great post and you bring up great points. As Jared said, my intentions are the best, even as you point out a bit short sighted maybe .. I dont pretend to know the entire makeup of the community, nor speak for it. You are correct, everyone has a different “definition” of what the tech community it is. Obviously we only know as far as we go, so to speak.
I do not really think there should be an overall organization, not really possible, I was just tossing ides around in my head and then out through the keyboard.
Your graphic is very good, and yes I find myself on one region more than the others and your point is well taken. I do not mean to , nor is it possible to “reign” all the various sections of your graphic in to one “vanilla” group if you will.
I wasnt trying to “throw” everyone into the same bin, just talking off the top of my head about what I have seen. You mention the Blogger meetup, as I do. I agree that these are two very different groups, yet there is some crossover between both. You yourself went to both, right. I wanted to as well but due to constraints could not.
I do not pretend to know all or speak for the entire “DC Tech Community”. I do however, like to promote and speak for the DC Tech Community for how it is defined in my zone, thats all. Our definitions are really just the perceptions we gather from around us and that is simply my definition, yours is different, as is everyone else’s.
Your post is great in the fatc that it makes us think and shows us sides we may have otherwise missed.
Regards
jimmy
But words matter, and definitions matter, and I don’t think perception has anything to do with it. The people who define the local tech community as anything less than “everybody professionally or otherwise interested in technology in the DC area” are at best mindlessly excluding people— and at worst mindfully excluding people.
Call it something else ;)
Ross,
Keep up the good work. You forgot to include the shark infested waters and Atlantis on your map. Like minds naturally gravitate toward each other and that is what is happening with our community.
Bob
I like Socializr for posting and cross-polinating events inside a community of folk with overlapping and aligned, but not absolutely equal, interests. It’s a sweet little application. It doesn’t require any extra work to orchestrate the umbrella community; each group self-manages; each individual participates at their choice.
For an example of how I use it, go to http://socializr.com and search on my name: Jessie Newburn. I’m going to post this note on Jimmy’s blog, too.
This is awesome Ross, thanks for putting it together!
[...] explains some of his thoughts on community and some of the pushback that he’s gotten as he’s focused on the DC Tech community. Community is a perception of what is around [...]
Hi Ross, thank you so much for this blog post.
I'd like to suggest a better use of a central calendar.
There is a coordination problem in the tech community DC, but I am more bothered by the visibility problem:
There is a thriving DC tech scene but the joke is, only few people outside of DC know it.
I am relatively new to DC (2 years) and I must say I am really stoked by its tech ecosystem: I am involved in DC's Drupal (content management system, this web site is built on Drupal) community and the fact that so many people in DC do outstanding projects with it and so many key contributors to Drupal live in the DC area is a huge PLUS for me and the company I am working for. I am looking forward to get more involved in other tech communities for cross pollinating. (And I need to check out better the art and photography scene, but that goes to far here).
But: if I visit some other city in the US (or in Europe) people don't typically view DC as a tech hub. I'd like this to change. We need to put DC on the tech map and I think there is huge potential for that.
I think that both problems - coordination and visibility - are connected and we could solve them by better using a central calendar:
- it's in every organizer's interest to throw an event with least overlap with other similar events. we don't need an organization to coordinate this, we need a central calendar to go, look up and announce our events.
- we then need to make sure that this calendar has enough visibility. we need to promote the calendar on our blogs and promote our events through it: linking, linking, linking.
- the calendar is also going to help tremendously in showing off to the outside world (and this is where my concern is going to be addressed): Washington DC, not just government, high crime, cherry blossoms and half smokes but also (and foremostly for many people): TECH HUB.
http://dctechevents.com/ looks like the place to coordinate to me - what are people's thoughts on that?
Excuse me if I went on posting thoughts that have been brought up in earlier discussions, as I said I am new here. I am really interested in making DC a better tech place, in many ways.
Alex
See also my comment here: http://eastcoastblogging.com/2008/03/21/do-we-lack-cohesion/#comment-221...
I am also a fan of DC Tech Events ;)
Great post Ross! …and thanks for telling me about it!
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