TEDxMidAtlantic is fast approaching. For those of you going, what are you looking for? If you answered “looking forward to meeting the Baltinerd,” that’s acceptable and I’m humbled. If not, then what?
Last night, I was listening to the podcast of this week’s episode of The Signal. It came with an interview with Weekend Edition’s Scott Simon on his career and the TEDx theme: “The Power of Stories.” Go check it out. As a journalism geek, I’m especially excited to get the chance to meet Simon.
Aneesh Chopra has probably the most powerful tech job in the country, and it’ll be exciting to see what he has to say.
See you at MICA. Or not. Yeah, registration is closed. Sorry.
Dominic Cerquetti onstage with his band, Rare Candy, at Tigercon 2009 on Sept. 26 at Towson University. When not rocking out to video game tunes, Cerquetti works as a programmer for Firaxis, a Hunt Valley-based game developer. (Photo by the Baltinerd)
Dominic Cerquetti thought he was just goofing around with high school friends on the computer, making computer-generated objects in 3D Studio Max. But when an artist from local video game developer Firaxis came to a career day at his high school, he realized his hobby could lead to a job.
“He was like ‘Hey, want me to show you some 3D stuff?’ And he popped out some models from ‘Sim Golf’ and showed us these incredible houses and people they had modeled and golf courses and all this crazy stuff,” Cerquetti said.
Cerquetti realized he could never stack up as an artist, so he decided instead to go into programming. Cerquetti graduated from Loyola University Maryland in 2006 with a degree in computer science. He then got a job as a programmer for Firaxis, the Hunt Valley team known as much for its flagship series, “Civilization,” as its lead creative mind, Sid Meier.
The Baltinerd talks with radio host and tech guru Mario Armstrong about the growing Baltimore tech scene, what the state needs to do to keep the talent, how he got his start and his dream digital refrigerator. Mario spoke to us by phone while traveling in Phoenix.
I would have been at Ignite Baltimore last night, but it was their idea to be the same day as The Protomen playing at Metro Gallery. Sucks to be Ignite Baltimore, but when The Protomen are in town, I have no choice but to go.
The Protomen, who played last night with Rah! Rah! Replica and …soihadto… (you may recognize their frontman), are a Nashville-based Megaman rock opera group. Epic win, they are. They come through Baltimore pretty often, usually with Bit Gen or Super Art Fight nearby.
The latter was the case last night, as Jami Noguchi and Nick Borkowicz were off to the side, doing their thing.
Jami and Nick rocking out the canvas, which SAF plans to sell on eBay. (Photo by the Baltinerd)
Pictures? You bet I haz them. Of all people to be there, my photojournalism professor was hanging out and gave me some tips. Some of these photos turned out awesomely.
City Paper put out a really cool article yesterday about a topic I’ve recently been exploring myself. It’s a fantastic, meaty feature and I’m wondering if I can be pissed at them for beating me to it.
Game developer Benjamin Walsh, who lives in Towson, and brand strategist Tina Tyndal, who lives in Silver Spring, met at a September 2008 meeting of the International Game Developers Association. Walsh said he was looking for a way to network with video-game professionals at a time when he believed programmers dominated many of the meetings in the area.
“I’ve been doing a lot of networking in the area, going to D.C. and Philly,” he says by phone on the Sunday after Innovate Baltimore’s first event. “I didn’t see anything that really appealed to me. We work in technology, but we involve a lot of other disciplines, not just programming. Since I’m not a programmer, it’s hard to talk in a room of people who are just talking about codes.”
While some of these events, such as Innovate Baltimore, are initially only social gatherings, and others, such as Ignite, are oriented around presentations, over time each event becomes a little of both. Entrepreneurs need good ideas and talented employees to be successful, but they also need to be able to present their ideas well to raise investment money. While many event organizers and attendees are attracted by meeting others in the city doing similar work, they are also looking to find new people to work with and improve both the presentation and content of their own business plans.
Tyndal, an avid gamer whose speech is peppered with marketing terms such as “brand leveraging,” says that she was looking for a way to bring together different disciplines in the tech community. “What I wanted and Ben wanted was an opportunity for professionals to have drinking socials,” she says in a phone interview. “Our group definitely brings in some extra people from the video-game side and the marketing side.”
And of course, if you want to help me with my project, by all means, let me know.
Are you working in the Baltimore tech circuit? Have you worked with a local company? Got an opinion on the state of the city and the region as a technology hub? I want to hear from you. Send me an email.
Gus Sentementes is a Baltimore Sun reporter and the guy behind BaltTech. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us the other day. We’ll probably be hearing more from him in the future…
What helped Baltimore become a hub for tech startups?
I think Baltimore has been attractive for tech startups for a couple reasons. There are lots of smart people being churned out by the local universities, i.e. JHU, Towson, University of Maryland, etc. It’s also still a comparatively inexpensive place to launch a tech business, when compared against other East Coast cities. But the strength of the region goes beyond just Baltimore city proper, there’s a lot of activity and innovation going on in the counties around Baltimore, too. It helps that the state sees a major influx of federal dollars every year, that support many, many small and mid-size businesses in terms of outsourcing and contracting. There’s a lot of high-tech expertise rooted in federal government and military work that often blends into the civilian and private sector. Lots of cross-pollination.
Is it fair to call Baltimore a geeky city? Why or why not?
There are two sides of Baltimore. Sure, there’s the geeky side, where people with plenty of education and degrees make positive contributions to society on a par with some of the other most vibrant cities in America. But there’s also the poor and desperate side of the city that too often seems to be on the outside looking in. The greatest challenge right now is to bridge these two realities.
What motivated you to start BaltTech?
After spending several years writing about the worst and most depressing aspects of life in Baltimore, I wanted to take some time to write about some of the smart, innovative things our fellow citizens are up to, in the form of their technology exploits.
When Imagi Studios announced they were working on adaptations of “Astro Boy” and “Gatchaman,” my initial reaction was one of incredulity. “Wait… what? The people who did “TMNT” doing two classic anime series as CGI showcases?” That was quickly followed up by me worrying about how much the film was going to suck.
Turns out those worries were unfounded. “Astro Boy” is a 2009 take on the classic Osamu Tezuka story. It tells a new story while keeping the essential heart of the original. It has its issues though….
“Astro Boy,” for those who don’t know how this story goes, is essentially a “Pinocchio” tale told through Tezuka’s post-World War II lens. In the futuristic, floating Metro City, after Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) loses his son Toby (Freddie Highmore) in an accident, he attempts to build a robot in his son’s image. The robot is almost exactly like his son, but it isn’t, and Tenma can’t really love him.
That’s where things branch off from the original. Toby (later renamed Astro) is chased by government forces led by the corrupt President Stone (Donald Sutherland) and falls to the surface, where he makes some new friends, including the sassy Cora (Kristen Bell), and really starts to fit in. Of course, that doesn’t go so well when his problems follow him.
Things get complicated, more complicated and more dark than your average family adventure film. And that’s not a bad thing.
The film, obviously, wouldn’t be “Astro Boy” without a child dying onscreen in the first act. It’s also chock full of social commentary in how it treats robots and sometimes seemingly wants to use Astro himself as a human-robot metaphor for racism. In the age of Obama, it might just be so. One scene towards the end of the movie carries a political slogan that seals the deal: “It’s not time for change.”
“Astro Boy” also carries considerable celebrity clout. Besides Cage, Sutherland, Bell and Highmore (who has a few issues with his American accent), we get Eugene Levy, Bill Nighy, Nathan Lane, Charlize Theron and even Samuel L. “mother****ing” Jackson.
The film’s a lot of fun to listen to and a lot of fun to watch, but the plot suffers. For starters, everybody besides Tenma and his colleague Dr. Elefun (an underused Nighy) just write off the fact they watched a kid die. We get character development with Cora tantalizingly teased then interrupted. Astro doesn’t realize he’s a machine until he can talk to other machines (maybe the steel hair and galvanized underpants could have tipped him off?). Most of the toys that make Astro, Astro aren’t seen until the last five minutes, down to the butt machine guns. The ending is covered in flowers and unicorns and wrapped in a pretty little bow, something the show never was. Issues like the racism metaphors and the class divisions between Metro City and the trashed, polluted (ala “Wall-E) surface are glossed over and never discussed again.
And while the film has the iconic characters like Astro, Tenma, Elefun and Ham Egg, Astro is the only one who looks like Tezuka drew him. The rest aren’t quite as faithful to their lineage. They look more Western. But I guess, like the voice talent, it’s what puts butts in seats.
But if you watch it knowing it’s different, knowing there are going to be plotholes, and accept them, you’ll have great fun with “Astro Boy.”
I had promised fandom friends in the past that I’d post this. This is Towson’s marching band performing Yoko Kanno’s “Tank!” at the homecoming game today. I’d go so far to say that the band is really the best reason to go to Towson’s football games, because watching Towson get whomped isn’t very exciting.
Word comes down from Gus Sentementes that Amazon.com has just launched same-day delivery in Baltimore and several other cities. Order your stuff by 10:30 and get it that afternoon for just $6.99 an item. Even on Christmas Eve The catch? You need to be an Amazon Prime member to get the sweet deal; otherwise, it’ll set you back a little more.
