Anthony Broad-Crawford

GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals – from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists – donate their time to provide solutions for non-profit organizations. Since its inception in 2007, the GiveCamp program has provided benefits to over 150 charities, with a value of developer and designer time exceeding $100,000 in services!

I am helping organize the local Cleveland instance of this event.  We are just gearing up and this event is still in the works.  So, please stay tuned as more details emerge about date, location, and organizations.

Cleveland has a very successful young professional organization called The Cleveland Professional 20 / 30 Club.  This group is a non-profit organization created to retain Young Professionals in Greater Cleveland by providing events focused on both personal and professional development.  I have been a member for a few years and recently joined the technology committee to help re-design and rebuild their website from the ground up. 

This group is setting out on an ambitious effort to build not just a website that looks better, instead, we are building an open source platform that will provide the necessary infrastructure for any professional organization to manage membership, schedule events, and build a community.  

The platform will provide integration into all known social software providers (Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) as well as other organizations leveraging this open source platform.  The project blog can be found here.

I am a startup addict. When my current company sells, I may enjoy the fruits of my labor for a brief period. However, during that break all I will be thinking about is my next company. That being the case, when I heard Cleveland was having a startup weekend event, and the companies tagline is as follows

Startup weekend is a community building startup event. Get together with local developers, marketer's, designers, enthusiasts, and do what you do best. Start projects, start companies. Not talking, all action.

I had to get involved. So I did and, I joined the Board of Directors and planning committee.  Along with several other entrepreneurs from the Cleveland area we made Cleveland’s startup weekend the largest, most exciting, most successful venue to date.  Check my blog for updates on our next event and read about it here. 

One passion of mine is entrepreneurship, and more importantly the growing entrepreneurial scene here in the Midwest and, specifically Cleveland.  Since helping start Within3 I have become actively involved in several initiatives to continue the promotion of local startups.  This blog is an extension of my passion where I find, highlight, connect, and promote local startups, entrepreneur, enthusiasts, and investors all along the rust belt.  You can find the blog here.