This weekend Edsurge will bring its Tech for Schools Summit to Baltimore. Acting Deputy Secretary for the US Department of Education, Jim Shelton, will keynote and 900 educators have signed up to learn about new tech tools and digital content. The Baltimore Summit comes on the heels of the wildly successful EdSurge Silicon Valley Summit which drew 600+ educators. Prior to Silicon Valley, EdSurge hosted similar events in Chicago and Rhode Island.

The EdSurge Summits are distinguished from traditional education conferences by their prioritization of educator needs and feedback. The picture shows educator feedback banks that are booked full throughout the day resulting in 1,500 educator commentaries on edtech products.

EdSurge’s user base has grown rapidly since they launched 3 years ago. They have emerged as the site-of-record for tech in education and have built a diverse community at the intersection of edtech, educators/teachers and the regional startups ecosystems. From the start, Founder Betsy Corcoran has been intentionally focused on building bridges across these populations, which she felt was critical to maximizing the impact of edtech products. She started a newsletter tailored for educators called Instruct and has sought out educators as writers.

I’m in awe of what EdSurge has accomplished with just a tiny amount of seed funding – it’s a remarkable testament to Betsy’s drive. But then again, as John Doerr says “entrepreneurs do more than anyone thinks is possible with less than anyone thinks is possible.”