January 20th, 2017 by Adam Sandman
One of our New Year’s Resolutions for 2017 was to support and nurture the tech community in our home area – Washington, DC and Silver Spring, Maryland (a hip superb of DC where our office is physically located).
So while everyone else today is talking about the Presidential Inauguration, we’re going to bring some optimistic light relief to recant our first attendance at the popular DC Tech Meetup group. This was our first time attending, and it was great to see the local DC Tech scene in action:
During the evening soiree which was held at the popular Provision 14 restaurant in the hip U Street area of the city, we met a diverse group of visionaries, cheerleaders and subject matter experts. Unlike a scene in the Bay Area or New York, it was great to see a diverse gender, racial mix, with lots of people coming together to celebrate future visions of what technology can do to better society.
We also had a great introduction to the legendary Mr. Cranky, a local veteran of the DC tech scene. He regaled us with tales of old, when DC was dominated by telecommunication tech titans such as MCI, Nextel, UUNet, and AOL.
During the night, we met with various folks to discuss the current state of the tech scene, including how venture capital funding in the DC area seems to be very focused on BioTechnology (in the Maryland suburbs to the north), cyber-security and education technology. We discussed the relative merits of DC vs. other tech communities (The Bay Area, Austin, TX, Boston, MA) and agreed that though the funding environment is not as strong, the benefits of a highly educated workforce that is looking for longer term employment can actually work to the advantage of DC-based firms…
So on that note, we wish you a great weekend, and hope your New Year’s Resolutions are going well J