May 12th, 2008 by Tom

On May 10, Baltimore hosted the very first SocialDevCamp East, an un-conference for social media and web 2.0. Patti and I were in attendance, along with another 100+ entrepreneurs, developers, researchers, media and other social media enthusiasts. It was awesome to be a part of such a passionate group of webheads representing Bmore, DC, Philly and even NY.

The un-conference rules dictated no advance agenda or speakers. All sessions were picked and scheduled by popular vote during the first hour (how web 2.0). After 45min of friendly shouting and debate, 16 sessions made the cut, covering topics like the business ($) of social media, semantic web, location-aware mobile services, Ruby on Rails, Amazon cloud computing, building iPhone apps and VC funding.

We had a great time and met a lot of smart people working on some cool projects. Dave Troy, who led the location-aware mobile services session, had a ton of insights to share and announced he was launching Openlocation.org to make working with GPS/Geolocation information easier. Bear from Seesmic blew our minds with his sematic web expertise and gave us a bunch of helpful advice and free Seesmic t-shirts!

The most spirited discussion came at the end during the session on attracting local VCs. While everyone acknowledged this is no Silicon Valley, we agreed that this area has a blossoming web startup scene that needs a strong unified voice. This event was just the beginning.

Here’s some of the cool local companies that were there:

• Spot Crime - Google maps mashup that plots crime stats. Says there was an assault with deadly weapon two blocks from me…eek.
• Grow Votes - website to educate young people about their local candidates and get out the vote. Travis, the CEO, told me that picking candidates who have the coolest sounding names is not exactly exercising my civic duty (doh!) .
• CheckmyCampus - For high schoolers who want the real scoop on colleges. Videos interviews with current undergrads dishing the dirt.
• Seesmic - new Valley startup from Loic Le Meur. Some call it the twitter of video…they call it video conversations.
• Blue Sky Factory - Baltimore-based email marketing company.
• Network Solutions - I think they do something with the Internet
• Smart Logic Solutions - Baltimore-based web development shop specializing in Rails and rich apps.
• CollectiveX - Create on-demand social networks for company intranets, member groups or just for fun.
• Cogmap - The wikipedia of org charts
• Advertising.com - AOL’s online advertising unit
• Jobmatchbox - Connecting hiring teams, job seekers and recruiters.
• 600block.com - Hey that’s us!

Check out the pictures on Flickr

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