Jon Chavez has a great lead article in today’s Business & Real Estate section of The Blade:
- Region’s tech culture starts reboot: Incubators, collaboration foster rebirth of entrepreneurship, start-ups
We are proud to have part of the TechToledo collaboration story included in the article!
One slight clarification: we did not “create” ToledoTechEvents.org. We “adopted” it: Jason Slagle had already created it (as tol-calagator.org). Instead of creating a new calendar, we put our efforts into adding content to Jason’s site, encouraging people to use it, and coordinating redesigns and updates to it. See the ToledoTechEvents About page for more details. September 23 update: the online article was updated to state “…they help improve and bolster a calendar of events Web site, ToledoTechEvents.org, created by local tech professional Jason Slagle.”
Overall, a great article that recaps the history, explains where we are now, and gets people thinking about the future we want to create.
- Read it! Share it with your entrepreneurial IT colleagues. Get involved in the community if you are not already.
One of the limitations of print is easy access to deeper and related information. To help with that, here are some links to things mentioned in the article. And a few things not mentioned: never enough room for everything.
- Molly Thompson, UT’s LaunchPad Incubator, October 9 Pitch and Pour.
- Petrichor’s LinkedIn page and web site (typical “start-up” state), Dan Paquette, Jake Warner, Alexander Mattoni.
- FoxPro history (main Fox Software product). One remnant of the local Fox Software community lives on with Bob Ruple’s annual FoxCon event.
- Solomon Software History on Facebook, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Plumbline Solutions.
- 2001 Blade article about ITANO (Information Technology Alliance of Northwest Ohio).
- (updated) Blade article (2000) on “Northwest Ohio Regional Technology Alliance”. Another in 2001. Related: there is currently a North Central Ohio Regional Information Technology Alliance; more importantly, there is the Lima Regional Information Technology Alliance.
- Meet-ups: Talking shop, drinking beer, organizing events, inviting speakers leading to start-up formation. There are about 15 active tech meet-ups including the Toledo Web Professionals.
- Bob Savage, Jeff Beamsley, Rocket Ventures, TechConnect, Regional Growth Partnership.
- CentraComm, Mark Robinson.
- Burton Miller, Tim Varner, Roost, Y Combinator news.
- DocuSphere.
- Seed Coworking, Gene Powell, Jamie Wright, Don Miller.
- Key parts of the regional tech entrepreneurial community that did not get mentioned in the article: Startup Weekend Toledo (go from idea to business pitch in a weekend, 3rd one coming in 2015), StartUp Toledo (monthly networking).