Baltimore’s tech community, visualized

Fresh off his look at social data in Baltimore and Ferguson and a TED Talk that’s being watched around the globe, Dave Troy’s Peoplemaps project zeroed in on the Baltimore tech community late last week.
In an update to his 2013 visualization, Troy’s map compiles social data from the Baltimore Tech Facebook group, which has 2,787 members. The map shown above is a look at the general areas where there are multiple users, outlining various sub-communities and how they interact.
Troy’s takeaways from the fresh set of data:

1) DC Tech is more integrated with Baltimore Tech than JHU or UMBC.
2) The structure hasn’t changed too much in the last year, but the JHU and UMBC folks are becoming more obvious.
3) We tend to keep folks who have departed. I see a few names of people who haven’t lived here in a while (John Trupiano, ahem) but who seem to like to keep tabs on the community. This is probably a good thing.
4) The 2015 visualizations are done with a slightly different layout from the one from 2013 (which was made for print and designed to optimize space) but the structure remains the same.

For those who are group members, it’s also worth taking a look at the conversation started by the map, which included a back-and-forth about whether Facebook is the best venue for such a conversation to take place.