Todd Marks's blog

This year’s TechNite, an annual event sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Tech Council (GBTC) was held at Ram’s Head Live in downtown Baltimore on October 11th, 2011. The event had a great turnout and it always reminds me of how great “Smalltimore” (Baltimore+ Small City) can be for fostering successful business partnerships. The support for tech in the Baltimore area has grown over the last few years. Connecting emerging companies with those who have a strong foothold in niche digital markets is paramount to growing the startup sector in Baltimore.

The emergence of the Mobile Apps market marks a major milestone in the convergence of technology and human evolution. One aspect of that market which offers the greatest convergence is that of location based services, which utilize augmented reality and soon, speech to search, bio interaction and smart agents. After 10 years as an internet entrepreneur I am finally sitting at the right place, at the right time to make instant information a reality.

The next generation of the Web is upon us now with the advent of the Smartphone, but it pales in comparison with where we are going.The critical step we are experiencing now is the ability to map digital information over the physical world, making Augmented Reality on mobile devices possible.The next steps are to provide better software experiences and to utilize better peripherals for sight, smell and touch.

Death of the Schoolhouse

A bunch of us from Mindgrub attended Twin Tech III, an event that we sponsored. It’s been a very popular event for the past two years and ended up selling out with more than 2,000 RSVPs this year. The event was held at the Lux Lounge, a posh club in DC, and the turnout was unbelievable. All three floors of the Lux Lounge were swarming with technology-minded business people from various states trying to do or find business. As a gold sponsor, Mindgrub had marketing rights and a table at our disposal.

I just came back from a social media and search engine Meetup in D.C. – I found out about it through the Meetup website and have been going to a lot of Meetup groups in New York, which have been wonderful. I’ve been looking at some of the Meetup groups in Baltimore, and they don’t seem to be as well attended as the ones in New York. Surprisingly, I found that there are several decent Meetup groups in D.C. as well. So I drove down, headed to Dupont Circle, and from there I went to the restaurant where the meeting was held in a back sitting area.

After the success of the Social Media Seminar in New York City I spoke at last month, KickApps and Clickability decided to hold a second Social Media Seminar in D.C. and gear it towards government officials. The objective of this seminar was to introduce the attendees to social media as a way to better achieve their goals, especially in relation to education.

The third proprietary, EdChart, is that of a radar view. This chart can show a student’s current curriculum as a radar view, but the goal is to move into a new way of thinking. The Edualizer and its components will offer a way to view the student as the center of their education plight and to support them with learning weighted heavily by their aptitudes and interests.

The second plug-in is a performance index that is broken into 3 parts - a Student Performance Index, Staff Performance Index, or School Performance Index (SPI). There will be different data available regarding GPA scores, SAT’s weighted per year, and other statistics that are tracked over a period of time.

The Edualizer dashboard system works with several plug-ins, including our EdCharts and EdSocial Systems. EdCharts is the piece de resistance– the graphs we offer aren’t just bar charts and line graphs. We do have student’s grades, GPA and school assessments as pie charts and line graphs, but we also have 3 key proprietary charts that give rich views into the performance of schools, teachers and students. These charts include a mapping system, a performance index chart and a radar view.