Volume 4 | November 22, 2019
Greetings!
Save the date for the TechPort Holiday Party - December 12th. Hope to see you there!
TechPort, California, Maryland:
Local Entrepreneur and Innovator Takes the Helm, Charts Path for Small Biz
Tommy Luginbill , the new director of Techport UAS Business Incubator of Southern Maryland , thinks about the entrepreneurs who are beyond working out of their garage and are ready to announce him or herself to the world. He also thinks about the large companies who have made billions of dollars but have run out of ideas. “They get so big they sometimes forget how to innovate and do real product development,” Luginbill says of the large companies. Connecting these two entities in a safe place where they can meet, discuss and explore possibilities is what Luginbill has in mind for Techport, a key component of the Saint Mary's County Innovation District anchored by the St. Mary’s County Airport. “There needs to be a better way,” Luginbill says. “There’s so much value in big companies meeting small companies as well as small companies meeting large ones. They both are in need of something the other party has. (Click here to read full article.)
Tech Talk AfterHours
TechPort and F3Tech Accelerators Director Mike Thielke will be hosting  Aaron Ault  from Purdue University for a presentation on Open Source Data in Agriculture and the related importance of the growing drone/ UAS tech industry in Southern Maryland for TechPort’s TechTalks After Hours on Wednesday, December 4, 2019, from 4:00 – 6:00 PM. Ault is a farmer and faculty member at Purdue and is one of the leads in the  OATS Center (Open Ag Technology and Systems) . A favorite speaker for past F³ Tech Symposiums, Ault hopes to advance the topic of open source data in agriculture throughout Maryland and encourage some in Maryland to collaborate in the working being done at the OATS Center, particularly given the high level of GIS and cybertech expertise in Maryland.

Aaron Ault and the Purdue team at OATS note that m any of the most promising avenues for sustainable food-ag system improvements involve novel applications of sensing, networking, and computation to big data science, visualization, and analytics . Powerful data sets and models continue to be developed at the plot, watershed, and even regional level from these research efforts. However, there are fundamental issues impeding progress in data-driven sustainability and preventing translation of research into practice. They believe these issues are solvable by open source  data and algorithm exchange paradigms. Ault and his team believe data exchange among systems, people, and projects is the  most critical component  for achieving  data-driven sustainability  goals.
Join us for this exciting discussion and networking in the TechPort Hangar!
For more information on the new TechPort TechTalk After Hours series, check our website events page.
Check the TechPort website for monthly schedule!
On November 21, from 4-6 PM UMD Chief Innovation Officer Julie Lenzer moderated a Fireside Chat with TechPort advisory board member Paul Ausley, local entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of TerraView360, Inc.

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VENTI is TechPort Featured Client of the Month - November 2019
A sensor system that would provide vital, up-to-the-minute information for first responders,
could save lives, keep people from getting hurt and save property, is one of TechPort’s latest
entrepreneurial initiatives. Developed by Venti, LLC, of New Bern, N.C., this technology has the
potential to impact many markets.
A prototype is already being tested, so Ed Hoffmann, co-founder of Venti, wasn’t in need of an
incubator. Instead, he was attracted to the accelerator opportunities offered by
Techport to fine tune his product and work with established entrepreneurs who have the skills,
resources and connections to help move this project from prototype to production.
“Our mission has always been about helping move defense technology into commercial
applications and vice versa,” says Tommy Luginbill, director of Techport UAS Business Incubator
of Southern Maryland. “Venti is a perfect match for the services we offer and how we are trying
to help facilitate the transfer and sharing of technologies.”
The TechPort InventorMuscle meetup group is starting back up! Stay tuned for details.
Interested? Contact TechPort at info@techportsomd.org for more information on fall programming.
From the Director's Desk :
Changes are afoot at TechPort, the UAS business incubator and center of activity here in the St. Mary’s County Innovation District. If you haven’t visited recently, I invite you to come see what’s new, including me. I’m Tommy Luginbill, and I’m excited to be the new director here at TechPort. My background is in business, innovation and entrepreneurship and I learned through the school of hard knocks what business is really like.
So it’s from those humble beginnings that I come to this community bringing with me entrepreneurial experience, mixed with work in both education and military contracts and grants and a love for Southern
Maryland. I think Techport is a perfect fit for me. It’s not just me that’s new here at Techport. We’re adding to our onsite resources here in the Hangar all the time. We’ve recently installed a brand-new tool shop and the crown jewel is a very rare and highly sophisticated 3-D printer that can print a four-foot wing of an airplane.

Please plan to join us for our Holiday Hangar Party from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday December 12: https://techportholidayhangarparty.eventbrite.com/

We’ll have a festively decorated 20-foot tree in our Hangar and if you’d like to have your picture taken in front of this beauty, just bring along a toy for our toy drive for kids at Children’s National Hospital.

In the meantime, we have two installments of our monthly TechTalk After Hours program coming up, from 4-6 p.m. on December 4, 2019, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., our After Hours program will delve into “ Data as a Driver for Sustainable Agriculture” .
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techtalk-after-hours-data-as-a-driver-for-sustainable-agriculture-tickets-78026113205 and J anuary 16, 2020, I-Corps Info Session & Evidence Based Entrepreneurship.

C ome check us out at one of these upcoming programs or just stop by and introduce yourself.
For a complete listing of our monthly programs and events, please visit our website https://techportsomd.org/and check our events calendar.

In the spirit of this season of thanks, I am so grateful, really humbled, to be here and am looking forward to meeting you, working with you and serving you.
Happy Thanksgiving, Tommy



From the Director's Desk is a new feature. Check here each month for remarks by TechPort on hot topics in the tech client and investor community. Have a suggestion for a discussion topic? Let us know! Email: Info@techportsomd.org .
Industry News
Did you know that TechPort is located in the St. Mary's County Innovation District? Visit this link to learn more: https://www.stmarysmd.com/ded/innovationdistrict/

Save the date for our next TeckTalk AfterHours on December 4th. For more information, visit our website.

TechPort Holiday Hangar Party and TOY Drive

Food, Music, & Live Tree

This December, we hope to bring the spirit of the season to children who have experienced abuse and neglect throughout the Southern Maryland region as we hold our 2019 Holiday Toy Drive.

We invite you to make the holidays brighter for these children by donating to our Holiday Toy Drive. Stop by TechPort anytime during December and place a toy under our hangar tree.

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