Mark Geller

Today I wanted to give a shout-out to Dr. Tony Karrer, creator of the Southern California Tech Central (SCTC) web site, which aggregates blogs from various folks working in technology throughout SoCal. As of this week, Tony started including this blog on the site, as you can see from the new banner on the right side of the page. I am excited and flattered to be included among such well-known and respected bloggers, so Tony thank you very much and I look forward to working together.

A bit of background on SCTC. Tony founded the site about 6 months ago as a community of bloggers who are involved in web, software and social media around Southern California. Specifically, his goals are:

1. Aggregate high-quality content (this blog notwithstanding)
2. Provide an easy-to-navigate site with information from diverse but related fields
3. Be a jump-off point for users to connect directly to the source material
4. Surface new content users might not have otherwise found

Tony himself is CEO/CTO of TechEmpower, a software, web and eLearning development firm based in L.A. Tony has more than 20 years experience as a CTO, most notably as the original CTO at eHarmony, has taught computer science for 11 years, and is considered one of the top technologists in e-learning.

In addition to running TechEmpower and SCTC, Tony is developing a new form of online networking, which he refers to as “visible networking.” The idea is he reaches out to folks in the L.A. tech community with whom he would like to connect, then he interacts with them (through a set of questions) the way he would if he met them at a networking event, except he does it in plain view of everyone on his blog, so everyone in the community can get to know them at the same time. Tony’s latest victim slash contact was me, and you can see our visible networking discussion here for an example.

Tony, these are great resources for the L.A. tech community. Thanks again for including me on SCTC and in your visible networking discussion–best of luck with the sites!