proximity-tech magazine

2 www.proximitytechmag.com www.proximitytechmag.com 3

A view of the Inner Harbor as seen by the GoPro camera hanging from the underbelly of Storyfarm’s DJI Phantom 2 drone.

TECHPROXIMITY

Publisher

Sarge Salman

IN THIS ISSUE

In the world there are ideas and there are crazy ideas. Here are some thoughts that may belong to the latter:

• Publishing a local periodical providing in-depth coverage of the local innovation and technology ecosystem

• Engaging under-represented student groups with the booming tech scene

• Paying students a living wage to develop analysis and writing skills

These disparate ideas coalesced into an idea in May that subsequently evolved into Proximity-Tech magazine, an effort to harness these opportunities while also tackling a societal problem worth solving: providing equitable opportunities for Baltimore city students to learn and earn, while reaping the dignity of an earned paycheck.

With the cheers from the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners, along with the support of Principal Battaglia and the Benjamin Franklin High School staff, an able group of men and women rolled up their sleeves and got to work to launch Proximi-ty-Tech magazine a mere eight months later, at the TEDxBaltimore conference in January.

It is important to acknowledge the tireless effort of those listed in the masthead, and especially the contributions of the Prox-imity-Tech Fellows. They, eight students at Benjamin Franklin High School in Masonville Cove, spent one hour after school—multiple days a week over the course of six weeks—earning $15 per hour to bring this issue of Proximity-Tech to print.

The lesson of their labor is that a commit-ment to success along with hard work trans-forms even the most improbable ideas into reality. And this is a much-needed exercise for us, and for the community.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITORIALBaltimore: A City of Firsts........................................5

FEATURESBranching Out...........................................................6Who’s Who in Baltimore Tech..............................10The Air Up There...............................................12-13

STUDENT CONTRIBUTORS...............14-15

ABOUT THE COVER: This photo of the Natty Boh Tower and the Brewers Hill neighborhood was taken by Storyfarm’s DJI Phantom 2 drone. We've flipped the image horizontally to keep Mr. Boh on the front cover.

4 www.proximitytechmag.com

TECHPROXIMITY BALTIMORE

A CITY OF FIRSTS

Baltimore was the home to many industrial economy firsts: the first dredger,

the first electric refrigerator, the first gaslight company, the first coal-burning steam locomo-tive, the first ice cream freezer, and the first electrical elevator among them.

We lost our mojo as Ameri-ca’s economy transitioned from an industrial economy into a knowledge-based economy. There were no notable “firsts” that sprang from Baltimore during the last 20 years of the digitization of communication and commerce.

This is about to change–and we should all be very excited about it.

This is going to happen because the most important developments in the last 10 years in information commu-nications technology (1. the ubiquity of cloud computing; 2. smart phones; 3. the rise of big data) are just now beginning to enable spectacular innovation in the life sciences, where

Baltimore has no peer because of institutions like the Johns Hopkins University and the Uni-versity of Maryland’s Institute for Genome Sciences.

I predict that there are a bounty of “firsts” to come from the mash-up of 21st century technology and life sciences. One of the first places where it is going to hit big is in the field of genomics (essentially, the appli-cation of genetic information to derive better health outcomes). Today, genomics is a small field, about $13 billion globally. In five years this will be a $150 billion field, and Baltimore is positioned to lead the way.

There will be breakthrough Baltimore technology compa-nies that use cloud computing to bring overdue efficiencies to the healthcare field. Applica-tions will be developed for mobile phones for a range of health-related interventions including diagnosis, disease monitoring and compliance, and providing expert technical

assistance to community health care workers.

With so much sensitive personal health information going digital, it will need to be protected. Good news: Maryland is the home to many of the world’s top thinkers and doers in the field of cyber-security. Many of the world’s top cyber experts are moving from government agencies working in the region and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and into the private sector. This puts Baltimore in a great position to be the home of many of the companies that will benefit from the doubling of the size of the cyber field over the next six years.

The last 20 years saw the rise of the Internet, mobile, and big data. The next 10 years will be most notable for the application of these technologies to create products and services that only exist in the movies and our imaginations today. Baltimore will be ready for it!

Those versed in United States foreign policy will recognize the name of Alec Ross: the Baltimore city resi-dent served as senior adviser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Taking tech company CEOs from the U.S. to tech camps in African countries and devising a method by which a phone text to a 5-digit code would transfer $10 to the American Red Cross for earthquake relief efforts in Haiti were just some of the projects Ross worked on during his time in President Obama’s administration.

Born in West Virginia, Ross studied history at Northwestern University before moving to Baltimore in 1994 for a fellowship with national nonprofit Teach for America, which drops recent college graduates into schools around the U.S. for two-year teaching positions. In 2008, during Barack Obama’s first campaign for the presidency, Ross served as a volunteer helping to craft the campaign’s media and technology policy, a position that caught the attention of future Secretary of State Clinton.

Now 43, Ross still resides in Baltimore with his wife and three children. He current-ly serves as an adviser to companies in the U.S. and abroad, and is completing a book about how the industries of the future—big data, mobile payments, cybersecurity—will shape politics and economics over the next half-decade. As for national politics, including murmurings of a Hillary Clin-ton run for president in 2016, Ross says, “I’m doing whatever Hillary Clinton asks me to do.”

CAN CHARM CITY LEAD A NEW 21ST CENTURY

ECONOMY? ALEC ROSS, FORMER ADVISER

FOR INNOVATION TO SECRETARY OF STATE

HILLARY CLINTON, SAYS BALTIMORE IS MILES

AHEAD OF THE REST OF THE U.S.

WHO IS ALEC ROSS?

www.proximitytechmag.com 5

PUBLISHERSarge Salman

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSKen Berlack, Alex Dominguez, Shawna Williams,

Andrew Zaleski

SCHOOL COORDINATORDebbie Woolley

ART DIRECTORWendy Johannesmann

GUEST EDITORIALISTAlec Ross

PROXIMITY-TECH 2015 FELLOWSAmanda Barahona, Shashawnda Campbell,

Tamika Hall, Maurice Hill, Noah Keyton, Dominic Mapili, Patrick Nelson, TaiVuan Newman

GRANT WRITEREli Park-Yanovitch text by Alec Ross

PUBLISHER'S NOTE


SILICON VALLEY TECH COMPANIES LOOK TO MAKE WORKPLACES MORE DIVERSE. BUT AS SOME BALTIMORE STARTUPS KNOW, CREATING A DIVERSE WORKFORCE IS HARD WORK.

BRANCHING OUT

Diversity in the technology field has been in the news–especially as prominent Silicon Valley companies, one after the other, began releasing their own employee diversity num-bers last summer.

Numbers published by Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Yahoo show that the companies’ workforces are dominated by white and Asian men. As Slate.com wrote in June, the “overall U.S. workforce is 91 percent white and Asian” at the offices of Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. (At Yahoo, that number is 89 percent.) Hispanic workers comprise 3 to 4 percent of the workforces at the four companies combined; black workers at all four companies comprise 2 percent of the workforce. For com-parison’s sake: The overall percent-age of Hispanic people in the U.S. is 17.1 percent. The overall percentage of black people in the U.S. is 13.2 percent.

In the tech industry, having a more diverse workforce is more than just for show. According to an editorial The New York Times published last October, there have been several studies that “show that companies with gender and ethnic

diversity tend to be more creative and more profitable, because varied perspectives help them design products and services that appeal to a diverse, worldwide audience.”

That’s a philosophy several com-panies in Baltimore’s own technolo-gy sector are embracing.

“Diversity means great collabo-ration and good business practices,” says Shervonne Cherry, the creative and social strategy leader at Mind-grub Technologies in Locust Point. “It means different ideas based on different experiences coming together to solve the challenges of our clients.”

But even though companies like Mindgrub have realized this, they still face challenges when trying to make their workforces more diverse. Simply put, creating a diverse work-place is really hard.

“One of the main disparities really starts at school age, lower [grades] through college,” says Paris Pittman, a senior technical recruiter at Advertising.com in Tide Point.

No matter how much a company tries to increase its workplace diver-sity, it is never as easy as pressing a button.

BALTIMOREPIONEERSEDUCATION CHANNEL 77 & THE PROXIMITY PROJECT, INC PRESENT

Entirely Producedby Baltimore City Public School Students

on Baltimore City Comcast Channel 77online at http://vimeo.com/cityschools

AARON HENKIN, REPORTER

RONI ELLINGTON, PROFESSOR

EVODIE NGOY, FILMMAKER LOIS FEINBLATT, THERAPISTTOKYO CIGAR, MUSICIAN

With Leading Thinkers & Doers in Charm City

30 MINUTE

Q&A SHOW

7pm Monday – Friday

SEEMA IYER, DATA SCIENTIST

JOE EHRMAN, COACH

FOR MORE INFORMATION: [email protected]

text by Shashawnda Campbell, Maurice Hill, Dominic Mapilliillustration by Alex Fine

2%3-4%

89%91%

GoogleFacebookLinkedIn

Yahoo

White+ Asian

White+ Asian

Hispanic Black

The overall percentage of

Hispanic people in the U.S. is

17.1 percent. The overall

percentage of black people in

the U.S. is 13.2 percent.

DIVERSITY OF TECH WORKFORCENumbers published by Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Yahoo show that the companies’ workforces are dominated by white and Asian men

www.proximitytechmag.com 98 www.proximitytechmag.com

TECHPROXIMITY

Another Storyfarm drone photo. In the foreground is Oriole Park at Camden Yards; in the back-ground, M&T Bank Stadium, where the Baltimore Ravens play.


Shervonne Cherry is a multitasker, but not in the traditional way. As creative and social strategy lead for Mindgrub Technologies, she fuses a keen sense of digital marketing with creative design. At Mindgrub, Cherry provides creative direction for mobile, web and print projects, branding, and social media marketing strategy. One of her most recent projects includes creating the design for wearable technology applications and developing client strategy around interactive triggering technologies such as iBeacon. Before joining Mindgrub, Cherry worked in the government and educational sectors, providing creative strategy to drive new products and services. Cherry is not only passionate about helping her clients at Mindgrub; she also is a key force in helping grow Baltimore’s technology entrepreneurship community. She’s a co-organizer for the Baltimore-Washington Tech Meetup as well as a Betascape organizer, DiversiTech Board member, Ignite Baltimore alumna, and self-proclaimed foodie. —TaiVuan Newman

SHERVONNE CHERRYAs a trauma surgeon at the John Hopkins Hospital, Albert Chi’s clini-

cal research focuses on providing advanced technologies for people with traumatic injuries. But during a talk he gave at the Kennedy Krieger Institute children’s hospital in Baltimore, Chi was challenged by a family in attendance on what prosthetic devices were available for small children. “Really, there wasn’t much given the costs of current prosthetic devices and how quickly children outgrow these devices,” Chi says. Inspired by the challenge, though, Chi would soon get involved in a groundbreaking effort to create prosthetics for young children using 3D printers. He quickly realized using this new tech-nology would be much more cost-effective to design and produce compared with the development of traditional prosthetics. ”These 3D printed devices are wonderful,” says Chi. “They’re capable of very gross motor tasks and we can print them for as low as $20 to $50.” —TaiVuan Newman

ALBERT CHI

Jenny Beatty is a woman of action. She has been a forest ranger, a park ranger, and a taste tester, to name a few. “One of the best jobs ever was washing dishes at the Appalachian Mountain Club in the White Mountains in New Hampshire,” she says. “I worked morning and evening and hiked during the day.” Now an AmeriCorps worker, Beatty’s day job is with STEMaction, Inc., assisting some 1,000 volunteers running FIRST (For Inspiration and Rec-ognition of Science and Technology) robotics competitions and programs for schools and students across Maryland. “I have been involved with FIRST ro-botics programs since 2001 when my oldest son joined a high school team,” says Beatty. “I don't make much money (we get a small stipend through AmeriCorps), but I love working with volunteers, and there are lots of really fun and interesting people of all ages who volunteer for these programs.” —Amanda Barahona

JENNY BEATTYJames West was a curious person when it came to how things worked.

He enjoyed taking appliances apart. He would eventually study physics at Temple University, and he also worked during the summers as an intern for the Acoustics Research Department at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. After graduating in 1957, he was hired full-time as an acoustical sci-entist by Bell Labs. He teamed up with another scientist, Gerhard M. Sesslar, to invent what would become the compact microphone, an invention that became a game-changing moment in their scientific careers. In short order, by the late 1960s, the electric compact microphone was in mass production. West and Sesslar’s invention today is commonly found in tape recorders, camcorders, baby monitors, and hearing aids. —Patrick Nelson

JAMES WEST

THERE ARE PLENTY OF BIG NAMES IN BALTIMORE’S TECH SCENE. HERE ARE FOUR YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY KEEP YOUR EYES ON.

ADVERTISE WITH US, CONTACT [email protected]

WHO'S WHO IN BALTIMORE TECH

1

“IF YOU HAD TOLD ME SEVEN YEARS AGO THAT THIS IS WHAT I WOULD BE DOING I WOULD’VE SAID, ‘THAT’S CRAZY.’

- NEWSMAN TURNED STORYFARMCEO JOHN SHERMAN

www.proximitytechmag.com 13

Storyfarm cofounder John Sherman calls the company’s drone an “amazing tool” that captures photos from perspectives nobody has seen before.

Once a side business for its cofounders, Storyfarm has grown to 11 employees who work in the company’s Fells Point headquarters.

THE AIRUP THERE

The view from a drone over the Baltimore Ravens' stadium is a bit like the rest of John Sher-man's life: uncharted territory.

Sherman runs Storyfarm, a Baltimore video production company that shoots marketing videos, as he says, for “everything from fighter jets to nursing homes.” Once a television news reporter, Sherman left the news business in 2010.

“Never saw it coming. If you had told me seven years ago that this is what I would be doing I would’ve said, ‘That’s crazy,’” Sherman says of his new career.

A new tool was recently added to Storyfarm’s recording arsenal of tripod-mounted cameras: a DJI Phan-tom 2 quadcopter, better known as a drone. Fitted with a GoPro camera, the radio-controlled drone weighs under five pounds. Dipping into M&T Stadium, flying up the side of the Bromo Seltzer tower, and cruising past Mr. Boh's big red eye are some of the new angles Storyfarm has captured by drone.

"It allows everybody to see things from perspectives that nobody’s seen from before," says Sherman.

Storyfarm uses a four-man team—one person to fly via controller, one person to spot the drone, and two for boxing out a flight area on the ground below.

While Sherman says the camera resolution is too low on the drone to do for-profit work, lightweight drones repre-sent a new business arena for videogra-phers and photographers in the wake of a 2014 court ruling. The Federal Aviation Administration, which has no official regulations on the books for commercial drone use, has nonetheless fined people who use drones commercially. But a judge ruled last spring that flying for re-muneration is no different a practice than hobbyists flying model airplanes

"So, basically it’s a little bit like the Wild Wild West. It’s a big gray area," Sherman says. "We are looking to that court ruling and using that as the basis to fly the drone."

Prior to founding Storyfarm, Sherman had done 12 years of street reporting, most recently with WBAL, winning a du-Pont-Columbia Award along the way. But after the market crash of 2008, cutbacks in the use of part-time freelancers meant full-time employees like Sherman had to cover more night and weekend shifts.

"I went from working five days a week dayside for five years, which was the schedule to have, to working Thursday and Friday nights," Sherman says.

But the new schedule allowed Sherman to run Storyfarm on the side

FOR VIDEO PRODUCTION COMPANY STORYFARM, A TINY DRONE ALLOWS FOR VIEWS OF BALTIMORE UNLIKE ANYTHING SEEN BEFORE

text by Noah Keytonphotos by Jason Cheung

two days a week. Now, Storyfarm has 11 employees and focuses on branded storytelling, creating two-minute to five-minute videos on specific companies and brands.

Most of the companies are in the Bal-timore-Washington area, but their work has led them to North Carolina, Texas, and California.

Not to mention, thanks to the compa-ny’s new DJI Phantom 2, hundreds of feet above Baltimore’s skyline.

"It’s just an amazing tool,” Sherman says. "We're trying to use it as much as we can."

Some of Storyfarm's best works can be seen at the company's website, www.Storyfarm.com, including footage from the drone.


Not too long ago when people heard the word drone, an invasive military aircraft involved in bombing operations was the first thing most thought of.

But today drones are also being used for search and rescue, agriculture, moviemaking, and more. They operate in a legal gray area: The Federal Aviation Administration has said flying for remuneration is prohibited, but it has no official regulations against commercial drone work. The FAA does make exemp-tions: It has given licenses to fewer than 20 companies as of press time to fly over U.S. soil, and they expect that number to increase, stimulating a $90 billion industry. But private, commercial drone operators are clamoring for the right to fly, even as the FAA prepares to take public comments on a set of proposed commercial drone regulations. Expect more drones to take to U.S. skies in 2015. —Tamika Hall

“


ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS

SHASHAWNDA CAMPBELLShashawnda Campbell is a 17-year-old senior at Benjamin Franklin High

School who leads the way with a class rank of 4. She has consistently been on the honor role since middle school, and is part of a select group of students taking AP courses. Her interests are broad, and include volleyball, debate team, tutoring, and community service through the group Free Your Voice. What she liked the most about working on the magazine was being able to voice her opinion on the topic given to her and expand upon that. One thing she learned while working on the magazine is that researching can be very difficult.

Amanda Barahona, 17, is a student at Benjamin Franklin High School. She has many interests, including pediatric nursing, translating, and poetry. She hopes to expand these interests into a future career. She says getting involved in writing for Proximity-Tech magazine gives her a chance to improve her abilities as a writer. Amanda has written multiple books of poetry since middle school. “My writing is going to be shown in Proximity-Tech magazine, something that I never thought would happen, and it gives me a chance to show off my writing,” says Barahona.

AMANDA BARAHONA

Tamika Hall is a 16-year-old senior at Benjamin Franklin High School. Her inter-ests include reading and writing. She enjoyed working on the magazine because the use of her writing skills was being put to something else outside of school. She found challenging that they wanted us to write in a different way than what we are used to and to do that in a short time. She also found that being around friends was challenging while working on the magazine because it pulls you off task. She learned from working on the magazine about time management, such as spending time on working and not talking. She would like to go to Marymount University after high school and get a major in Nursing, and a minor in Criminal Justice.

TAMIKA HALL

MAURICE HILLMaurice Hill is 17 years old. He is a senior at Benjamin Franklin High School.

He loves to play sports such as basketball. He also is a member of a student-led activist group called Free Your Voice, which has been fighting for three years to stop an incinerator from being built in his community. He makes posters, march-es, and speaks out at events for the group. He’s also passionate about his school work; he’s been on the honor roll for seven years straight. Through his internship at Proximity-Tech, Maurice hopes to learn how to become better at analyzing, research, and writing.

DOMINIC MAPILIDominic Mapili, a sophomore at Benjamin Franklin High School, recently

helped write an article for Proximity-Tech magazine. He’s learned that nothing is perfect in the first try and that it’s good to be adaptive to constructive criticism. Dominic is interested in professional gaming as a pastime and a hobby. He enjoys challenging academics and is a member of the National Honor Society. He takes his education seriously and considers himself an overachiever. Dominic plans to go to college.

Noah Keyton is a 15-year-old sophomore at Benjamin Franklin High School. His in-terests are drag racing and video games. What he likes about working on the magazine is having to go back and pull quotes from interview transcripts because he normally free writes or writes about himself and never has to use actual quotes. He also likes having someone to give him constructive criticism and guide him through the process of writing an article. What he learned from this experience is that it's easier to write about someone or something when you are able to visually see what they are doing. Noah sees himself joining the Marines or the Army after high school.

NOAH KEYTON

Patrick Nelson, 17, and a senior at Benjamin Franklin High School, takes great interest in animation, karate, playing the guitar, soccer, and baseball. He is a straight-A student and has been looking to apply at many colleges, including Towson University and University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Interested in pursuing a career in animation, Patrick, at age 11, created an animation program called Pivot that lets you animate stick figures. Patrick also enjoys writing for Proximity-Tech magazine, giving him the opportunity to showcase his writing.

PATRICK NELSON

TAIVUAN NEWMANTaiVuan Newman is a 16-year-old sophomore at Benjamin Franklin High

School. His interests include playing video games, looking at different colleges to attend, spending time with his family, and watching and making YouTube videos. He also enjoys taking on challenging subjects at school. Some challenges TaiVuan faced while working on Proximity-Tech magazine include finding specific information on certain companies and employees and writing questions for in-terviews. Other challenges included turning in an article by the deadline because of delays getting in touch with interviewees. He learned that everything's not perfect and is getting used to receiving constructive criticism. He hopes to be admitted to the University of Maryland and become a professional YouTuber, and then start a career as a game software developer.

TECHPROXIMITY

SPRING 2015

BRANCHING OUT

WHO'S WHO?

HOW DIVERSE IS THE TECH INDUSTRY?

NAMES TO KNOW IN BALTIMORE TECH

STORYFARMTAKING PHOTOS OF CHARM CITY BY DRONE