This Baltimore tech conference went beyond programming to provide a healing tribute

Back in May 2022, ambitious young startup founder Pava LaPere didn’t win a pitch competition. 

It wasn’t that she couldn’t. It was a format the charismatic Johns Hopkins graduate knew well, having won numerous others. Why didn’t she win this one?

Because she took herself out of contention, said Kevin Carter, her longtime collaborator and friend. With a $25,000 check on the line, LaPere was conflicted. She was close to announcing a $3.5 million seed round for her startup EcoMap Technologies, and felt the competition money could be better used elsewhere. So, defying many competitive standards, she disclosed the forthcoming news during her pitch.

“She knew [the $25k] could do so much more somewhere else,” said Carter, EcoMap’s current business development director.

He shared this memory with tears in his eyes on stage at the conclusion of SuperConnect, a modest, first-time conference organized by the company LaPere co-founded with current CEO Sherrod Davis. 

Since that pitch competition, its founder briefly became a national story. Nearly one year ago to the day of Carter’s remarks, LaPere was the victim of the kind of violence that is rare in crime statistics but an obsession of cable news.

For most of Tuesday and Wednesday morning, inside the tidy conference center at Brown Advisory’s Fells Point offices, SuperConnect looked like the kind of enterprise startup user conference that takes place around the world: A startup invites its staff and customers to come together to recap themes and play with new functions the company intends to sell. 

As part of this, I led a panel on the power of data and storytelling — something core not just to Technical.ly’s journalism, but how other players like my co-panelists’ employers try to understand and describe their own ecosystems. Even Maryland Gov. Wes Moore came to speak about his faith in startups, and in EcoMap and his connection with LaPere.

Everything changed in the event’s waning minutes, when staff and closest allies remained. EcoMap CEO Davis joked with emcee and UpSurge Baltimore leader Kory Bailey about whether he could make it through his remarks without crying. Bailey won the bet.

EcoMap sells its software to economic development groups that engage entrepreneurs — those who identify as “ecosystem builders,” in the vernacular. Unlike more traditional enterprise software providers, the company has always had a touch more heart to its work. From LaPere and Davis’ initial creation, the focus was on trying to make entrepreneurship more accessible. And for the company’s leaders, LaPere’s passing made this mission all the more deeply personal mission.

During their remarks, Davis and Carter both shared how difficult the last year was for them. They shared news of a fellowship program they brought together and Johns Hopkins’ impressively speedy rebranding of its entreprenuership center — both in tribute to LaPere’s vision. 

Davis also poignantly shared what a mentor told him: “It’s time to turn the tragedy into a triumph, and the mourning into momentum.”