Building a tech community requires intentional and sometimes uncomfortable efforts. There can be a lot of hand-waving and noise generated while trying to garner attention, but two rather important criteria that often get swept aside are authenticity and humility. Hollow marketing efforts to create the illusion of success only encourage more noise that drowns out the actual progress of those putting in the work to build and ship meaningful products. Even worse are those efforts to deceive the public and the press by creating hallucinations in an effort to attract or placate investors.
This post by Alexis Muellner in the Tampa Bay Business Journal came as a bit of a surprise, but it was the culmination of many discussions and coffees over the past 15-ish years, where we discussed my personal observations of the rollercoaster ride that is the Tampa Bay tech ecosystem. I often mentioned the Savtira debacle in these conversations by asking (of the press) are we making an effort to highlight the actual technology innovators and business builders in our community or are we just waiting to hype up the next Savtira-type fraud?
And please stop referencing the Forbes Council “poll” proclaiming Tampa Bay’s position as the number one emerging tech hub. It is another sad example of wishing vs. working. The number of politicians and news outlets that gave this pay-to-play social media post credibility without fact-checking the source is yet another example of how we rush to be cheerleaders for the noise and drown out the signal.
Be authentic, be humble, and let’s put in the work required to support real progress without tripping over each other in an effort to take credit for the wins achieved by others.
Mil-OSS exists to improve technology development and innovation by connecting and empowering an active community of patriotic developers and solution providers with government organizations. Fortunately the Tampa Bay area is blessed with two of the U.S. government’s most visible and recognizable commands, U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command.
We’re working closely with them and other organizations across Tampa Bay to develop Hackathon topics that support the Mil-OSS goals of improving use of the taxpayers’ funds through thorough requirements extraction, wise execution, and streamlined delivery by leveraging open source and open technology innovation.
Challenges for this event will focus on the following:
Open Source OSINT Framework
Ensuring Cloud Security of Server Instances
Common Operating Model
3D Model Visualization and Collaboration
Read more about these challenges here.
This challenge is open to industry, government. military, students and academia.
Registration is free for this event but the registration process will close on October 21st at 5:00p.m.
Teams will have the option of working from one of the official event locations or work from a location of their choosing.
All participates must attend the event kickoff and the closing presentations to be eligible for awards.
In his final Startup Tampa Bay video as a @HillsboroughFL Commissioner, @MarkSharpeFL discusses his successful EDI2 program and how it has helped the local tech ecosystem grow in both activity and visibility.
A few recurring topics came up in this video that are worthy of additional discussion:
Finding startup resources in Tampa Bay
Branding Tampa Bay as a active & growing tech ecosystem
Last week marked Tampa Bay’s 7th annual BarCamp, a day long conference for Geeks, about Geeks and hosted by Geeks. In the tradition of the #unconference style, the crowdsourced agenda of topics and speakers provided an eclectic mix of technical and startup tech business sessions to choose from. We had somewhere between 750-800 people participate in this year’s event and of those that registered online, 60% said this was their first @BarCampTampa.
This event continues to draw a broad cross section of the region’s technical talent and I think a lot of those first timers walked away impressed with the content and wondering why they had not attended previous year’s BarCamps. We hope that you will tell a friend and return next fall ready to support this event as a volunteer, sponsor, speaker or as an attendee. We’ll bring the donuts, you bring the desire to share, learn, and collaborate with the others that make up the Tampa Bay region’s growing grass roots tech and start-up ecosystem.
Hillsborough County is working with the folks that organized last year’s National Day of Civic Hacking to host a combined Hack-a-thon focused on projects that will benefit our community. The Tampa / Hillsborough Hack-a-thon will run from Friday May 30th thru Sunday June 1st to come up with projects that leverage government data in a way which yields interesting new applications that will help improve life in Tampa Bay. The event is free, but you must REGISTER in advance.
Details:
Saturday, May 31, 2014 – 08:00 to Sunday, June 1, 2014 – 17:00
ITT Tech – Tampa Campus
4809 Memorial Hwy
Tampa, FL Florida 33634
Evolving a great idea into a sellable product requires a mix of innovation, instinct, and basic business discipline. My mission is to help early-stage founders understand start-up challenges, build their confidence, and establish their credibility. I’m not here to put lipstick on your pig or offer any silver bullets for venture funding; just grassroots experience blended with a little attitude and the occasional flinging of poo.
