The future of D.C. technology meme has spread across all of the D.C. blogs and discussion is taking place in all the comments and on Twitter. One thing is for sure, there is a strong presence of social media professionals in D.C. I would argue that this segment will continue to grow naturally and doesn’t necessarily need management, unless of course you group it with the entrepreneurs which appears to have naturally occurred.

For those of you not in D.C. I’m sorry for continuing to talk about this so much but trust me when I say that it has future implications for your city as well. The supposed lack of funding and the inefficiently organized entrepreneurial community is something taking place around the country. If everybody was blogging and Twitter I think we’d all be good to go but unfortunately that’s not the way it is.

The Social Times will be launching a new platform over the coming weeks to enhance the community and help things grow. We have already seen a disconnected set of services online and events offline. What many have discussed is an “overreaching organization.” I don’t think this requires significant management by the participants, it simply requires one central location that can be referred to when anything is taking place.

Additionally, when entrepreneurs are in need of investors, or new startups are in need of lawyer or an number of other circumstances that take place in an entrepreneurial community, all the participants can reference one location. What I’d like to see happen is this D.C. technology meme end and we all simply become participants. Not just in D.C. but in entrepreneurial communities around the country. D.C. is just the first place where we prove that such a system can be developed.

Over the past few weeks I have been browsing around, calling people and attending events to find out what already exists in the community that we believe does not already exist. Additionally, I’ve been looking for services that actually don’t exist. What I found was a number of resources that most people simply didn’t know about. With this in mind I ended up revising the vision of the Social Times to “leveraging social technology to build local entrepreneurship communities.”

My theory is that most of the resources already exist we just need to make them more accessible to the community. That’s why I am working to build a platform that will help build this community. I’m hoping that others can help build it and benefit from it. My goal is not to promote our services but instead promote the members of the community. All for free. This will take place in a matter of weeks, not months.

I also believe that providing valuable media about leveraging social technology for entrepreneurship is important and as such we will continue to produce articles on a daily basis. You will see a number of new media channels on this site and new services to accomplish these goals. Media is no longer one-way, it is participatory and as such I believe the Social Times can succeed at accomplishing its goals.

I will give out details about the features of the platform in the near future but look for the services to be rolled out quickly. What features would you like to see? Is there something bigger that you think I’m missing here?

Last night I attended the D.C. New Media Meetup. I got into a conversation with a number of people about this drive for building the D.C. technology community and more than building the community (which already exists), building an environment that is supportive of web startups. We already have a number of local web startups that are doing well but there appears to be a significant disconnect from these companies the community and the investors.

LaunchBox Digital, the local early stage investment fund, was a welcomed addition to the D.C. community. Unfortunately not everyone who applies gets selected and this has been discouraging for a few applicants. We are on the verge of something big. There is more buzz surrounding D.C. technology, there are an increasing number of investors and there is also more vocal participants than ever before.

There are still parts of the community that are learning though. As we all know, D.C. is not your traditional web startup community in that we don’t have a local university that is known for technology and we don’t have the risk taking environment. In order to build this environment I think we need a few additional things beyond the things I’ve previously mentioned.

Entrepreneur Education
If we are going to get a thriving group of entrepreneurs we need people to be educated about what it means to take risks, how to approach getting funding and how to know when to quit. I’ve heard a lot of complaints from a number of people about what’s lacking but I also think that there is plenty here and sometimes it is not the community. We read in Techcrunch about new startups getting funding everyday (well frequently at least) and it leads a lot of other people to think that they deserve funding for their crazy internet idea.

I’ve had crazy internet ideas and so far none have received funding but I have learned something from the people that do receive funding: it’s not about the idea, it’s about the team. Also, if you are going to get funding you better start networking like crazy because locally there are a lot of investors that think and act like Warren Buffet. Check out the following video and you’ll know what I mean:

Active Leaders and Educational Events
There are a lot of big named business people in the D.C. area. None of them are at any events. While I don’t expect them to attend the average happy hour, we need to have events where inspirational people can speak. When I saw Mitch Kapor speak at an event with Facebook developers out in California last year, I saw what was different about Silicon Valley. There are leaders that are at the events and are acting at mentors to the community.

I’d like to get a series of events where we have speakers talking to the local entrepreneurs. I’ve already begun planning on one but that hasn’t been announced yet. What events do you think would help build this community further? What else do you think would be helpful to continue building the community?

Tonight there will be a panel at George Washington University on entrepreneurship. The panel includes Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital (previously interviewed), Jon Jackson of Mobile Posse, Andrew Ryan of ARC Solutions and Thom Wallace of emPivot. Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs is streaming the event live. The event should start streaming below momentarily: