A new supergroup of local tech gurus have joined forces to form the Memphis Technology Foundation with hopes to grow the MEMTech community through mentorship. The group is gearing up for its first official event, the annual TechCamp at Southwest Tennessee Community College.
“There are lots of user groups and cool tech things happening in Memphis, and we want to bring attention to that and get people out and involved with it,” says Brian Swanson, MTF Co-Chair and co-organizer of the Memphis.Net user group. “There’s a huge technical workforce in Memphis, but most often they are off in their own silos working for their respective companies.”
Since the first of this year when MTF informally formed, the group touts doubling the size of the local user group community from roughly 280 people to more than 600, and Swanson feels there is substantial room for more growth.
“We still feel like there are easily another 3,000 to 5,000 people in Memphis that still are not engaged in the events that are occurring,” Swanson says.
MTF board members include Swanson; Joe Ferguson, MTF Co-Chair and organizer of the Memphis PHP User Group; Brad Montgomery, co-organizer of the Memphis Python User Group; Daniel Lissner, organizer of the Memphis Java User Group; Claudio Donndelinger, board member for Mid-South Makers; and Bryan Robinson, co-organizer for the Memphis Web Workers.
“We’ve been involved in the local tech community for a long time, and what led us to start Memphis Technology Foundation was seeing the common sets of problems that many of the user groups here in town are facing. We want to solve some of these problems and make it easier for other people to start user groups or do tech events in Memphis,” says Ferguson, a software developer at
Rocket Fuel who is heavily involved with MemphisTechnology.org,
HACKMemphis.com and MemphisPHP.org.
Mentorship will pay a key role for the foundation, including helping developers find sponsorship for groups and events.
“The typical user group is a once-a-month, very narrowly focused group, whether it’s for a programming language or a set of technology tools,” explains Ferguson.
Next up MTF will host the annual TechCamp this Saturday, November 1. TechCamp was founded by GeekMemphis and Dave Barger, who passed away earlier this year.
“As a tribute to him, Memphis Technology Foundation wanted to step up and make sure the event still happened,” Swanson says.
This year’s event will follow a similar format to last year, with session tracks on Marketing, Development, Start-ups, and Design.
Tickets are only $5, and MTF is hoping attendance hits 150 for the one-day event.
Other major local tech events each year include HACKMemphis in September and
GiveCamp in February, as well as smaller hackathons throughout the year,
“You can take all the problems that a user group has and multiply them by as many as 100 when you put on a day-long or weekend-long event,” says Swanson, Director of Information Technology at
Banes Capital Group, an investment firm that buys and sells SBA loans as an investment vehicle.
“We are currently in talks to possibly do a web front end developer conference in June,” Swanson says. “We’re not trying to own any of these events. We’re just trying to make sure that they are as successful as they can be and that they’re reaching everybody in their target audience,” Swanson says.
MTF is in the process of filing for its 501c3 status.
“We want to make that available to others that are running technology events, so they won’t have to individually go after a 501c3 because that’s a long and involved process,” Swanson says.
Ferguson points that a 501c3 designation will allow MTF to go after larger grants that smaller groups might not qualify for or be able to handle due to smaller workforce.
Networking is also a benefit of user group meetings and events.
“Employers and hiring managers are more likely to hire someone that they’ve already met or someone they’ve had a personal introduction to,” Swanson says.