Events : Innovation + Job News

Baltimore’s Taharka Bros. Ice Cream is launching a Kickstarter campaign June 12 to raise $35,000 for their new “Vehicle for Change” food truck. And a new movie by Oscar-nominated directors will document their effort in a new, yet-to-be named movie that highlights businesses that support social change.
 
“We don’t have a retail shop and a lot of people ask us to have a retail shop or ask how to get our ice cream,” Taharka CEO De'Von Brown says. “So this is a way for us to reach our audience, to have something that’s out in the community.”
 
Taharka Bros. serve up more than just the typical cookies and cream ice cream flavors. They serve what they call “food for thought,” flavors based on social movements. Their goal is to spread the message of inspiring movements and people in history through ice cream, such as a flavor named after Langston Hughes’ poem, “A Dream Deferred.”
 
Taharka has had a presence at festivals such as the Baltimore Book Festival and Artscape. They have also held events at their factory in Hampden, Baltimore and their products are available at over 65 restaurants in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. But a food truck will allow it to make appearances at more festivals, corporate events and colleges.
 
“Hopefully the food truck will be a way to reach people in terms of a physical one-to-one type of outreach. It’s a community outreach vehicle,” Taharka Creative Director Darius Wilmore says.
 
Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, who directed “Detropia” and “The Boys of Baraka,” have just wrapped up filming of a yet-to-be named movie on Taharka’s Kickstarter campaign. The movie will be featured at the Tribeca Film Festival next spring. The movie will also document Taharka’s collaboration with actress and comedienne Rain Pryor to craft a flavor named after her late father Richard Pryor, whose comedy often addressed class and race. The flavor is tentatively being titled “A Richard Pryor Moment.”

Writer: Daryl Hale
Sources: De'Von Brown and Darius Wilmore, Taharka Bros. 

The Charm City Fringe Festival will encompass more venues and showcase more  performances when it returns in November.

This year, the festival will expand from a weekend festival to a five-day event mainly in the Station North Arts and Entertainment neighborhood. The festival will hold its main productions at the Theatre Project in Mount Vernon and at Single Carrot Theatre, says Co-founder Zachary Michel. He says he expects to attract between 1,000 and 1,500 attendees to the paid performances, and additional guests for the opening and closing parties.
 
The Fringe Festival’s goal is to highlight performance art in a range of genres, from plays to dance and burlesque. The Fringe Festival is different from other Maryland festivals because of its unique purpose to promote the “fringe,” or works that are not mainstream or well known. Michel says the festival was able to expand this year because it added three volunteers who are in charge of production and marketing.
 
Also new this year is the system that Michel and co-founder Michael Brush are using to find acts. Instead of booking performances, artists can now apply online at charmcityfringe.com by June 15.
 
Participants in Charm City Fringe Festival will have access to a performance space as well as promotion and marketing via the festival for just an application and production fee.
 
The festival aims to foster a community of theater performers, from up-and-coming companies to smaller groups, looking for the opportunity to reach a broader audience. Michel says that he hopes by bringing a diverse audience of established performance artists as well as young artists, the festival will allow new performers to network and establish valuable connections.
 
“We’re expanding our reach, we’re expanding the amount of artists that we’re taking in, we’re trying to bring more people in and overall just build up the scope,” Michel says.
 
Those interested in attending the festival can purchase tickets online as well as at the box office.

“I think that [attendees] are going to find that there’s just a lot that they didn’t know was going on and really discovering a new side of Baltimore so to speak,” Michel says. “To new art, to new people, to new rumblings that are going on that are going to be emerging in the next couple years.”

Writer: Daryl Hale
Source: Zachary Michel, Charm City Fringe Festival 

As the summer tourist season gets underway, Fort McHenry last week added another attraction. For the first time, visitors to the national landmark located in South Baltimore will get the same view of the fort —from the water —  that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem during the War of 1812’s Battle of Baltimore.
 
The Fort McHenry Boat Tour: A Star-Spangled Experience runs every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, through Sept. 15 and is expected to return next summer. Seven tours depart daily, on the hour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tours leave from the Fort McHenry Pier at 2400 East Fort Ave.
 
The 45-minute narrated tour recounts Key’s experience during September 1814. There are “special audio effects. We’ve got all the bells and whistles, bombs and music,” says Lisa Lynn Hansen, director of Friends of Fort McHenry, a nonprofit that works with the National Park Service to provide educational programs and living history activities.
 
The Friends of Fort McHenry, Fort McHenry National Monument & Historic Shrine, Living Classrooms Foundation and Baltimore Water Taxi partnered to create the tour, which is expected to be an annual summertime offering.

A $33,000 grant from the the state's Maryland War of 1812 Commission funded the effort. Students from the Baltimore School for the Arts narrate the tour while El-J Productions produced the script and sound effects. Baltimore Water Taxi is providing the 49-passenger boats under a charter arrangement with Friends of Fort McHenry.
 
Fort McHenry drew 850,000 visitors last year. Hansen says the main challenge in arranging the boat tour was setting the length of the tour.  “We didn’t want to take them out on the water too long. They’ve come to tour the fort and this is an add-on,” she says.
 
Friends also wanted to make the boat tour affordable. Visitors can walk around the grounds of the fort for free. A tour of the fort costs $7 per adult, children under age 16 are free. The boat tour costs $10 per adult (age 11 and up) and $5 per child (ages 3 to 10). Tickets are sold at dockside on a first-come, first-serve basis.
 
Source: Lisa Lynn Hansen, Friends of Fort McHenry
Writer: Barbara Pash

Baltimore’s underground band scene and city kids on dirt bikes are among the themes featured in movies with local ties at this year’s Maryland Film Festival. Taking place May 8-12, the festival will host 50 features and 80 short films.
 
The following movies have local ties:
•  Matthew Porterfield’s “I Used to Be Darker,” which was filmed in Hamilton, Roland Park and Ocean City and has won festival awards in Nashville and Buenos Aires;
• “Hit & Stay,” which tells the story of priests and nuns in Catonsville who challenged U.S. intervention in Vietnam;
• “12 O’Clock Boys,” a documentary about a Baltimore dirt-bike rider, which just won the HBO Emerging Artist Award;
• “If We Shout Loud Enough,” a movie on Baltimore’s underground music scene and the band Double Dagger; and,
• “I Am Divine,” a documentary on the legendary drag icon that features interviews with John Waters.
 
The film festival added an extra day of movies in response to demand from the audience, says Maryland Film Festival Director Jed Dietz. Many people were turned away from films they wanted to see so festival organizers added more screening times.
 
Gabriel DeLoach, one of the filmmakers behind “If We Shout Loud Enough,” says the movie highlights the great music coming out of Baltimore.
 
“There’s a lack of cutthroat-ness and everyone is really encouraging of one another. There’s all these opportunities for musicians to put themselves out there.”
 
DeLoach lives in Charlottesville and became familiar with Double Dagger and other bands while attending the Maryland Institute College of Art. The band will be present for a Q&A after its Saturday evening screening. 

Says DeLoach, "It's a film made in Baltimore about one of Baltimore's best bands, so I think its only fitting that it screens there."



Writer: Julekha Dash
Sources: Jed Dietz, Maryland Film Festival; Gabriel DeLoach

The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is more than halfway to reaching its capital campaign goal of raising $6 million to fund its move to a new home in downtown Baltimore's Mercantile Trust and Deposit Co. building.

To date, the company has raised about $3.5 million from board members, individuals and foundations to support its move. The nonprofit is on track to begin renovations of its new home within six months and debut productions at the historic property at 200 East Redwood St. in 2014.
 
The money raised will pay for the purchase and renovation of the building and initial operating expenses. Lesley Malin, managing director, says the campaign is in its “quiet phase.” When it reaches 80 percent of the goal, the company will reach out to the public for contributions although she does not have a timeframe for doing that.
 
“We’ve already had a couple of open houses for the public to see the building. We’ve also had wine-and-cheese events” for donors, Malin says. “We like quiet events, like open houses. We will not have a gala to raise money.”

The new home is two blocks from the Inner Harbor and has been the home of several nightclubs. Baltimore architectural firm Cho Benn Holback + Associates Inc. will convert the 14,000-square-foot, circa 1885 building into a 250-seat theater.
 
The Helm Foundation, whose director Scott Helm is a Chesapeake Shakespeare trustee, bought the building for the company. Other foundation donors are The Abell Foundation, which recently gave $250,000, The France-Merrick Foundation, which gave $200,000 and The William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund, which gave $25,000 for operating expenses.

It could also get some state money. In the current Maryland General Assembly session, companion House and Senate bond bills would provide $500,000 in matching grant money to the company. The bills have yet to be approved.

Until now, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has presented shows in the summer at an outdoor venue in Howard County's Ellicott City. The acquisition of the Baltimore theater allows the company to expand its season and its audience. In its new home, Chesapeake will present four to five productions as well as an annual Charles Dickens-inspired Christmas show while continuing its summer shows in Ellicott City.
 
Malin says she is in talks with the Baltimore City Public School system to offer every student the opportunity to see live theater, including an annual spring production of “Romeo and Juliet” especially for students.
 
Malin is also talking with the Baltimore School for the Arts, a public high school within walking distance of the theater, about “some kind of partnership,” she says. “Different things are on the table.”
 
“We are not just opening a theater but saving a beloved architectural landmark and an anchor in a troubled venue,” she says of the company’s new home. “We will serve as a cultural center for the neighborhood. It’s another reason to move and live downtown.”
 
 
Source: Lesley Malin, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 

Kithly LLC, a startup entertainment website, is kicking off a new business strategy to make money. 

The free website asks users to input their preferences for entertainment and then Kithly culls through its own list of activities and events that fit users' lifestyle. Kithly is now opening up its website to even promoters for a fee, giving them access to the people most likely to attend their events, says Co-founder Devin Partlow.
 
During the month of April, event promoters can sign up on its website to have information about their events sent to Kithly users for free. After the free offer ends, event promoters will hopefully stick around and continue to use the website, at a fee of $5 per event. 
 
“Everyone knows about the big shows and concerts in Baltimore. We are interested in the small and local events,” says Partlow of promoters and organizers who usually don’t have the budget to do much advertising.
 
“Instead of going onto a campus and hanging up posters or passing out flyers to whomever walks by, we are helping them reach their target market,” he says. “We used to recommend only things we could find for the site. Now, promoters and organizers will pay us to market to our users."
 
The change in business strategy is another evolution of Kithly since Partlow founded it in 2010. Originally called Hooopla, the idea was to let users of its website share information about events. It then broadened its reach to include information obtained from Facebook and Meetup groups. The company is one of four that graduated from Baltimore City's startup bootcamp Accelerate Baltimore.  
 
Partlow says he now has 6,000 recommendations on the website of places to go and things to do. The recommendations are constantly updated, and include events around the country. Most, though, are in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., Kithly’s home base.
 
“We analyze our users, what kinds of events they like and run it through our algorithm. We recommend things they wouldn’t necessarily hear about,” he says of local comedy clubs and band appearances.
 
In the last two months, Partlow says that the number of website users and clicks to the website have grown by 70 percent each. He says there are now about 300 users.
 
Last year, Kithly moved into the Emerging Technology Center in Canton. Kithly received a $25,000 Accelerate Baltimore award from the Canton incubator. Partlow met his cofounder Stacy Weng and advisor Ben Lieblich through CoFoundersLab.com. 
Partlow is focusing Kithly on entertainment but may add other areas like sports events in the future. “We are starting with that niche and we’ll see how it works before expanding,” he says.
 
Source: Devin Partlow, Kithly LLC
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

CoFoundersLab, a startup that matches business partners with one another, says it will close an angel investing round of about $500,000 next month and is expanding its reach in the U.S. and abroad.

Headquartered in Rockville and with extensive ties to Baltimore, CoFoundersLab connects entrepreneurs with one another and hosts targeted networking sessions to introduce founders to investors and partners. It is now adding 10 more US cities to the 20 in which it already has a presence. Internationally, it is launching in London, Tel Aviv, Singapore and Sao Paulo. CoFoundersLab is recruiting volunteer partners in its new domestic markets of Houston, Dallas, Detroit and Nashville, among others, as well as abroad.

CoFoundersLab already operates in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and Los Angeles. In New York City, for example, CoFoundersLab partners with a team at New York University’s Stern School of Business. In Baltimore, it regularly hosts events at Betamore and the Emerging Technology Center @ Canton and the University of Baltimore.
 
“We are looking for partners whose access to the community we can tap into,” says CEO Shahab Kaviani, co-founder with Culin Tate of a company that calls itself “matchmaking for entrepreneurs” in search of business partners.
 
Kaviani says the company’s partners are generally an accelerator or the coworking space of a university, where it hosts events that bring together entrepreneurs and investors/business partners. Its website also serves that purpose.
 
“The first challenge an entrepreneur has to overcome is finding the right business partner," Kaviani says. "In the past, you went to friends or networked. We are creating a large pool online."
 
CoFoundersLab began in 2010 as a part-time service to host events for start-up companies. In 2011, it launched its initial version of the online match-up website. In 2012, financed by The Fort Accelerator in Washington, D.C. and angel investors, it became a full-time service.
 
Kaviani isn’t sure of the number of match-ups for which CoFoundersLab can take credit.  He believes it is in the low hundreds. “Some we hear about, others we don’t,” he says, pointing to Kithly, an application company that was formerly housed in a Baltimore incubator and whose founder met his business partner through CoFoundersLab.
 
 It is also in the process of reorganizing its website. Currently, the website is accessible for free but Kaviani says a paid membership, with advanced features, will be introduced this year. Membership prices haven’t been finalized.
 
Next month, too, CoFoundersLab will find out if it has been chosen to advance to the final round of the state-sponsored InvestMaryland Challenge that culminates in April. It is currently one of 61 finalists in three categories for the $100,000 prize.
 
CoFoundersLab has a staff of five. It is hiring two staffers this summer, in marketing and technology development.
 
Source: Shahab Kaviani, CoFoundersLab
Writer: Barbara Pash

BMe, a nationwide initiative to highlight the accomplishments of African-American men and to encourage and support cooperation among them, debuted in Baltimore this year. 

The local initiative kicks off with a cash-prize contest for black men to relate stories of positive collaborative efforts. The deadline is Feb. 28 to enter and contest applications are on BMe’s website.

BMe, which stands for Black Male Identity, began last year in Detroit and Philadelphia. Like Baltimore, both cities have large African-American populations and strong black communities.
 
Baltimore was the next logical step, “an ideal city to demonstrate” BMe, says Rodney Foxworth, community engagement manager with Black Maryland Engagement, who is heading the local BMe initiative.
 
BMe's local community partners are Open Society Institute-Baltimore and the Center for Urban Families. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is funding the contest. This year, each of the three cities will receive $200,000 grant money. Individual amounts will vary, with a maximum award of $20,000 to any single entry. 
 
Last year’s contest focused on individual efforts. This year, collaboration was chosen as the theme for the one-time, one-year awards.
 
“We are collecting stories from black males. The first step is to talk about things they are doing in their communities,” Foxworth says. The criteria for the award is “to demonstrate collaboration and a positive outcome,” he says, whether it’s mentoring youth, teaching literacy skills or organizing black businesses.
 
Foxworth, a Baltimore native, is working out of an office in the Center for Urban Families, a nonprofit located at 2201 North Monroe St. near Coppin State University. He says BMe will stay in Baltimore after the contest. “It’s not meant to be a one-time thing,” he say. After the contest ends, Foxworth will be planning activities and community events.
 
Although BMe has only been in Baltimore about a month, the response has been encouraging, says Foxworth. “BMe is an effort to highlight the positive contributions black men make every day. It’s an acknowledgement of black men’s assets to the community.”
 
Foxworth says BMe may launch in other cities, possibly Pittsburgh next, although he doesn’t have a timeframe.
 
Source: Rodney Foxworth, BMe
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The incubator at Towson University, TowsonGlobal Business Incubation, recently kicked off its third annual business competition, open to anyone in the Baltimore-Washington area who has an innovative business idea. Winners get cash prizes and free incubator membership.
 
“The goal is to promote and engage people in the region in entrepreneurship and innovation, and in taking the route of starting a small business,” says Darlene Ugwa, the incubator’s program coordinator. “It doesn’t have to be a product. It could be a service.”
 
The competition has two rounds. In the first round, participants submit a three-to-five page executive summary of their idea. A panel of judges winnows the participants to five finalists. In the second round, the finalists submit a detailed business plan, including research, marketing and financials. A panel of judges determines first and second place winners.
 
The deadline for round one, the executive summary, is Feb. 11. Finalists in round two have until the end of April to submit their business plans. Winners will be announced May 1.
 
Although prizes for this year’s competition are still being determined, last year’s first prize winner received $4,000 and free incubator membership for a period of time; the second prize winner received $1,000 and an associate membership.
 
The competition has grown since it started. There were 12 submissions the first year; 24 submissions the second year. Entrants ranged from a video gaming company to a medical diagnostic application and a website to rent power tools.
 
Besides presenting their business plans to the panel of judges, all the finalists give a presentation at a Towson University reception open to the public. Over 100 people attended last year’s event.
 
Source: Darlene Ugwa, TowsonGlobal Business Incubation
Writer: Barbara Pash
 
 

An amateur photographer in Maryland has won a national film contest sponsored by director Ron Howard and Canon USA. University of Maryland, College Park senior Dylan Singleton submitted a photograph to Project Imaginat1On, a combination photo contest and short film series that will be made by celebrity guest directors and shown in a film festival next year. 

Singleton’s winning entry was culled from thousands of photographs submitted by the public. Musician James Murphy, one of the celebrity directors, picked Singleton’s moody, atmospheric photograph of a swimming pool at night for inspiration, much to Singleton’s surprise. Eva Longoria and Jamie Foxx are among the other celebrity directors involved in the project. 
 
“I sent in a couple of photos. One day, I got a call that I was a potential finalist. I’m still in a bit of a shock,” says Singleton, a Columbia resident who is majoring in sociology. “I’ve been swamped with papers and finals. It hasn’t set in.”
 
James Murphy is best known as the leader of the Grammy-nominated band LCD Soundsystem. He also cofounded the DFA label, which released the band’s catalogue, and he provided the original soundtrack for the 2010 film, “Greenberg.” Most recently, he was executive producer of “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” a feature-length film chronicling LCD Soundsytem’s farewell show at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2011.
 
For Singleton, a fan of online music blogs who has worked at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., being chosen by Murphy was a particular thrill. Has Murphy called to discuss the photo or his film?  “I’d love it but I’m sure he is a pretty busy guy,” says Singleton, who won a $500 credit to the Canon online store and two tickets to the film festival.
 
Murphy’s film will go into production next year. The location and date of the Canon Project Imaginat1On Film Festival has not yet been announced.
 
The photo contest was open to the public, who could submit photos in 10 categories with titles like “Backstory,” “Time,” “Mood” and “Obstacle.” Singleton entered “The Unknown” category.
 
The public voted on the winners – 10 winners in nine of the categories and a single winner in the 10^th category – for a total of 91 winners. The celebrity directors will make 10-minute films that are inspired by the photographs they chose.
  
 
Source: Dylan Singleton, winner “Project Imaginat1On”
Writer: Barbara Pash
 




 




 
 
 
 


 

Vircity LLC, the Baltimore back office resource center, will launch a startup crash course and is expanding into event planning next year. It plans to hire up to half a dozen workers to spearhead these projects. 

Janine DiPaula Stevens, founder and president, says she is hiring up to three people to organize a "startup program" launching in the second quarter of 2013. 

The program will provide a template, tools and workshops for people who are starting a business. “You can take courses but some people don’t want to do that,” says Stevens, who is considering what workshops to include in the program and how much it will cost.

Stevens says she will hire people with graphic design and event planning experience or recent college graduates to handle future events. She says that in working with nonprofit organizations and entrepreneurs, she noticed that they needed help coordinating and completing their events.
 
Stevens says one staffer had been doing event planning before. The expansion allows her to bring in larger events that require more staffers and more detail. She is expecting event-planning contracts to come in within the next two months..
 
Stevens founded Vircity in 2005 and moved to its location in Canton in 2006. The business is located on the ground floor at 2400 Boston Street, a retail storefront at the Can Company that gets thousands of walk-in customers per year.
 
Vircity provides a variety of back-office services for customers, including administration, bookkeeping, graphic design, digital and offset printing, high-speed scanning, packing and shipping.  Customers may also use Vircity’s address as their corporate address. Post Office boxes do not accept packages, Stevens explains, but Vircity’s mailbox does.
 
Stevens says fees depends on services. Customers can pay an hourly rate or per project. The annual fee for mailbox and faxing service is $300 per year; basic administrative support runs $40 per hour. For example, a nonprofit with minimal staff may hire Vircity to print, merge and post “thank you” letters to donors, at $40 per hour.
 
The privately financed Vircity is a Baltimore City-certified woman-owned business. Stevens was director of marketing at the Center Club before founding Vircity.
 
Source: Janine DiPaula Stevens, Vircity LLC
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

Hurricane Sandy has cost Maryland an estimated $1.6 billion in its total economic activity, according to a Towson University economics professor. 

That's everything from lost wages and productivity as businesses closed during the storm to lost sales at hotels, restaurants and stores, says Daraius Irani, director of the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson. That figure doesn't include damages, which is estimated to be as high as $50 billion across all the impacted states. Irani says he doesn't have a damage figure for Maryland. 

Irani says the figure is based on the loss of commerce from people not going out to eat or buying cars and not going to work. It's also based on comparisons with Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and Hurricane Irene in 2011. While Isabel had a greater impact on Baltimore City, Sandy's impact is more wide spreading, walloping parts of Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore. Still, Maryland didn't suffer the same devastation as Manhattan's flooded subway system, Staten Island or New Jersey.

At this point, Irani appears to be the only researcher with a dollar estimate of the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Karen Glenn Hood, spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, replied to an inquiry that the department is working on an economic impact report.
 
Likewise, Tom Sadowski, President and CEO of Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, says the nonprofit may have figures later but at the moment, it only has anecdotal evidence.
 
Sadowski says he has heard of lost time in the office, missed business opportunities and shuttered stores. On the other hand, there was enough warning of the impending hurricane that people were able to make arrangements to work from home. 
 
Says Sadowski, “Mainly, people were happy it wasn’t worse.”
 
Patrick Donoho, President of the Maryland Retailers Association, says that in the Baltimore metro area, many grocery stores stayed open on Monday and Tuesday during the height of the hurricane albeit with limited staff and limited hours. He says he personally heard from Giant, Safeway, Mars and Santoni’s supermarkets that they were open, as were two large hardware stores in the area.
 
By Wednesday, Oct. 31, almost all grocery stores in the area had reopened, Donoho says.
 
Statewide, Donoho says that the Eastern Shore was hardest hit as far as roads being closed and people being able to get to the stores that were open. “Baltimore metro saw less damage than farther north, in Harford, Cecil and some of Carroll counties,” he says.
 
“I don’t know what the day’s losses [per store] were but I do know that they’re gone. You never regain them,” says Donoho.
 
Mike Niemira, Chief Economist and Director of Research of the International Council of Shopping Centers, says the New York-headquartered members’ association, will be assessing the economic impact on malls and retailers over the next month.
 
So far, all he could say was that “a lot” of members had been affected, with the biggest impact in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia because of the storm’s path.
 
The Restaurant Association of Maryland says it had no data yet to report.

Sources: Towson University Regional Economic Studies Institute, Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, Maryland Retailers Association, International Council of Shopping Centers, Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

Ignite Baltimore is seeking applicants for two Ignition Grants, to be awarded for projects that aim to make Baltimore City a better place to live and work. Past winners have included a video tour of the city’s parks and trails and interviews with the city’s homeless population.
 
Applications for the grants of up to $2,250 each are due by midnight on Sept. 30. A committee picks the winners. Now in its fifth year, the awards are sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Technology Council. Previously, the Baltimore Community Foundation sponsored the awards. This year, the sponsor is the Greater Baltimore Technology Council.
 
Kate Bladow, coordinator of the Ignition Grants, says the grants are intended to encourage people who have ideas that address the social and economic challenges of the city. The award-winners speak at the Ignite Baltimore event, which also helps to publicize their ideas.
 
In the past, a grant went to a woman who formed a company in which low-income, stay-at-home mothers made reusable bags for produce that were sold at local farmers’ markets. Another grant-winner taught a video-making course to children at the Walbrook branch of the Enoch Pratt Library and encouraged them to make videos of their neighborhood. A third winner was the developer of a website to showcase Baltimore’s dance community.
 
The winners will be announced at the Ignite Baltimore event, to be held this year on Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. at the Brown Center of the Maryland Institute College of Art on Mount Royal Avenue. Last year, 1,300 people attended the sold-out event. Tickets to the event cost $5 each, and the proceeds are used to fund the Ignition Grants.
 
Source: Kate Bladow, Ignite Baltimore’s Ignition Grants
Writer: Barbara Pash

Start Up Grind, an international community of entrepreneurs and investors, makes its debut this month in Baltimore. Loyola University of Maryland and Wasabi Venture are inaugurating the group here for monthly meetings, open to everyone interested in technology and startups.
 
The first local Start Up Grind will take place Sept. 18 from 6 to 9 p.m. at Loyola University, 4501 North Charles St., in the Student Center’s fourth floor programming room. Brian Razzaque, CEO and inventor of SocialToaster, is the guest speaker.
 
“We were interested in the concept of getting entrepreneurs together, and Start Up Grind is also a way for us to be involved in that community,” said Kendall Ryan, director of events and outreach for Wasabi Ventures. The group serves as an outlet for entprepreneurs who want to network, brainstorm and offer feedback with one another. 
 
Start Up Grind began last year in Silicon Valley and has grown into an organization with chapters in more than a dozen cities in the U.S. and in countries ranging from Australia to the Union of South Africa. Ryan says that Start Up Grind Baltimore will host a monthly event although an October date has not yet been chosen.
 
Fee ranges from $10 (with early-bird registration) to $20 per person. The event is free to Loyola University undergraduates and graduates. Ryan says the reception so far has been enthusiastic and she expects at least 150 people at the first event.
 
Start Up Grind Baltimore joins another group that gives local entrepreneurs an opportunity to get together. Baltimore Tech Breakfast began last year as a casual get-together for about a dozen people and has since grown to a list of 1,000.
 
Ron Schmelzer, president of the tech company, Bizelo and founder of Baltimore Tech Breakfast, says about 250 people usually attend the monthly event. Meetings are held the last Wednesday of the month except for this month, when the meeting will be on Sept. 27. Meetings are free but pre-registration is required. 
 
Schmelzer says he started Baltimore Tech Breakfast as a way “to help increase the momentum of technology in Baltimore.” The group is not associated with any organization. Participants are invited to give short, three-minute talks about their companies.
 
Sources: Kendall Ryan, Wasabi Ventures; Ron Schmelzer, Bizelo
Writer: Barbara Pash