dc tech beat

One of the key sites to emerge of the last few months in helping the DC tech community organize has been DCTechEvents.com. DCTechEvents.com is the brainchild of Ross Karchner; he launched the site in May of this year as a means of alleviating his frustration in keeping up with the ever-growing number of events in the DC area. The site was based on an idea that Ross had been mulling around for a while, which he calls an “Editorial Calendar Aggregator,” which is basically a system that subscribes to event information from various sources and allows a human editor to selectively republish specific items; essentially, an event-reblogging system (or, as Ross calls it, an Event Grinder). Ross is working on an updated version of the system that runs the site, which will launch soon, and will include integration with Google Calendar and will have more complete editorial functionality. It sounds like it could turn into a full-featured service for others to utilize in creating their own event sites/streams.

Since it’s launch, the site has been steadily updating with the latest events, and has attracted a strong following in the DC tech community. According to Mr. Karchner, the site has about 400 subscribers; subscription to event information is available via an RSS feed or via email.

Some background on Mr. Karchner: Ross moved to the DC area in 2005 from Harrisburg, PA. While in Harrisburg, Ross built Localfeeds.com, a site that aggregated content from RSS feeds by geographic location, allowing users to read or subscribe to a feed of posts by city/state or zip code. Localfeed’s was one of the first RSS aggregation applications, with a good reputation and a decent usage. Unfortunately, a server crash took down Localfeeds, and the site went underground for a while, surfacing periodically in new forms, but never making it’s way back to it’s former glory, and is still missed today. Ross works at Strat@comm, a division of Fleishman-Hillard, blogs at Ross Notes and can be seen at most DC tech events.