For an organization less than a year old (officially), MAGIC has had a very busy year. We are grateful to the many individuals and organizations who’ve played a role in our inaugural year of operations. Here’s a month by month look at what we accomplished together in 2016.
JANUARY
Building on organizational efforts in the prior year, the group planned for the year ahead. Founding documents were drafted and filed, and the founding board members were elected.
FEBRUARY
Members of the MAGIC team met with local students from Carroll Career & Tech’s Cisco program to assess their interest in programming and to solicit ideas for events that would engage local teen techies.
MARCH
In response to input from local tech students, MAGIC partnered with Freedom Broadband to put together a Tech Exploration project for the Celtic Canter, a 10K road race in Westminster. The students learned how to build, operate, and troubleshoot a wireless network set up for the event, working alongside tech professionals. Two of those students ended up with summer jobs with that company.
APRIL
MAGIC received notification that 501(c)(3) status was granted by the IRS.
The first Capture the Flag Hacking event was held at the Ting office, with teams from McDaniel College and Career & Tech. At that event, MAGIC supporters from InfoPathways, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Labs, and Carroll County Public Schools hatched the idea of the Networking Sandbox to host future hacking events and other networking and coding events.
MAY
MAGIC partnered with the Carroll County Public Schools and the Carroll County Public Library to put on Tech Alley during the Westminster Flower & Jazz Festival. Freedom Broadband also supervised another wireless networking Tech Exploration project with an even larger group of students from Career & Tech.
MAGIC also received a grant from Carroll County Government.
JUNE
Planning for MAGIC Smart Home Project begins.
JULY
MAGIC’s first tech company signed: SwitchBridge, a start up healthcare data company.
AUGUST
We took some vacation.
SEPTEMBER
MAGIC participated in the City of Westminster’s Downtown Westminster Tech Stroll, an event highlighting tech companies and new innovations around the Main Street area.
MAGIC also launched Slack to connect and collaborate with its growing community of technology innovators, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts.
OCTOBER
Partnering with McDaniel College and the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, MAGIC kicked off Live Local, a social media experiment challenging teams of college students to develop marketing strategies to incentivize shopping at local businesses.
The Smart Home Project had it’s kickoff event, featuring presentations by partner companies K4 Connect and EntryPoint Networks.
NOVEMBER
The second MAGIC CTF, an Ethical Hacking competition grew to include 33 students, forming 10 teams, representing McDaniel College, Carroll Community College, Gerstell Academy, Carroll Career & Tech, and Westminster High School.
DECEMBER
Carroll County was recognized as a White House TechHire Community. MAGIC is honored to play a leading role in this effort and collaborate with community partners to continue to deliver non-traditional tech training opportunities.
Hack & Sip, the first MAGIC fundraiser featured local sommelier and tech enthusiast Bernie Vogel of JeannieBird Baking Company, combining fine wine and food with interactive hacking events.
THANK YOU
It’s been an incredible year. We couldn’t have done it without the many people and organizations who have passionately joined us to help make Carroll County a hub of technology innovation and entrepreneurship. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
