BALTIMORE—Lance Lucas believes he has a way to change the fortunes of this city. A local technology services entrepreneur and president of the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce, Lucas is also CEO of the non-profit organization Digit All Systems (DAS). His organization aims to give members of the city's most disadvantaged communities the technology and life skills needed to join the state's booming IT economy.

In July, Lucas and DAS grabbed national headlines (and drew the wrath of Second Amendment advocates) by staging "Stop Shooting, Start Coding," a laptops-for-guns exchange event. In the midst of an exceptionally violent summer—even by Baltimore standards—DAS partnered with the Baltimore City Police and offered city residents refurbished Dell laptops and free computer training in exchange for firearms.

It was the organization's most high-profile effort to date, part of a larger effort to get computers into the hands of Baltimore residents. In total, DAS has given away over 3,000 refurbished laptops through city schools and other organizations, and it has set up computing labs in city housing projects as part of an effort to bridge the "digital divide."

But Lucas' greatest impact may still be to come. His next two goals complement each other in an attempt to improve lives through learning the technology, but these initiatives currently stand at drastically different points of progress.

To start, Lucas has a vision for Baltimore's school system that he believes would turn it into a magnet to draw people and investment back into the city. By introducing technical certification programs into the curriculum, he hopes to turn the city's youth into an economic engine—allowing them to draw big paychecks right out of high school as data center engineers, security experts, and ethical hackers. It's a concept he wants to expand even beyond the city limits.

And in addition to this training pipeline, Lucas wants to put free Wi-Fi in one of Baltimore's most depressed neighborhoods in order to give people access to the technology and skills they'll need to get jobs. He envisions hands-on training through a small data center in downtown Baltimore that would double as a cloud computing training ground. The idea could give students experiential skills for what Lucas and others at DAS see as the next big thing in IT.

There are just a few problems. And after over a year of trying, the data center still sits empty. For a number of reasons, as convincing as Lucas' sales pitch for his vision may sound to many in the city, he has yet to land the backing to pull it off. This could be due to the tech community's perception of Lance Lucas himself or a cultural disconnect that has been widened by local politics. But ultimately, any challenges may stem from the fact that Lucas' approach—while highly ambitious—may be too practically focused to inspire the city's traditionally lofty-goal-oriented, big-money supporters.

Tech pros or “tech butlers?”

You'd think all this would be something people in Baltimore's IT-driven industries could get behind. But Lucas has run into criticism from many who promote science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in Baltimore because of his focus on achieving goals through professional certification programs like those offered by CompTIA, Microsoft, and Cisco.

"I want him to be successful," said Andrew Coy, executive director of the Digital Harbor Foundation (another nonprofit focused on boosting tech education). "I just question some of the quotes and numbers he's given on the effectiveness of what he's done, as well as the overall scope of what he's doing, and whether that's even the right approach to take."

Others are more critical. "He should be teaching people how to program," one person in the tech nonprofit community told me recently. "Teaching tech support skills is a waste of time and resources. Instead of giving people the skills needed to land high-paying tech jobs, Lance is teaching them how to put a tie on and become tech butlers."

But Lucas believes the certificates are a stepping stone to get young people on the road to developing broader tech skills. He sees these as a way to help them be self-sufficient in a community where there isn't exactly a support system for budding technologists. "How can you ever say that an A+ person is not required when Best Buy still charges $325 to format your hard drive and $125 just to look at it?" Lucas replied. "And they're making a mint. [Edward] Snowden had an A+ certification from a community college, and he was making $85,000 a year."

Lucas doesn't want people to stop at CompTIA A+ certification—an industry association standard certification for PC support technicians. He sees it as a first step. "A+ certification gets you 15 to 25 dollars an hour, $30,000 a year," Lucas said. "The next step, Network+, is $63,000 a year. Security+ is $83,000 a year, and to work in cyber security at the Department of Defense, Security+ is a requirement. If you have a Security+ certification, you can skip the interview process. So I'm not crazy at all—what I'm doing is creating a stepping stone."

Rebooting a city in need

Even before the spike in murders this summer, Baltimore already had a reputation for violence. Because of David Simon's books and television series Homicide and The Wire, the city's name instantly invokes an image of drug gang wars, crumbling neighborhoods and schools, and social ills run out of control.

No one will deny that this city has problems. While Baltimore's public school system has seen significant improvements in the last decade and the city has seen nearly a decade of reduced crime, the recession hit hard. The city has an official unemployment rate of about 10 percent, nearly double what it was five years ago. And that doesn't count people who have been jobless for so long that they're not even considered part of the work force. In some neighborhoods, the jobless rate has run 20 percent or higher for decades.

Then there's the violence. After nearly a decade of progress on violent crime, things exploded this year. Baltimore has seen 156 homicides so far and 50 shootings this summer alone. The spike in violence prompted Baltimore's City Paper to call this the "Summer of the Gun."

For years, the city has arranged various types of gun buyback programs in an effort to get weapons off the streets, but these have done little to stem the violence. DAS' laptop-gun swap event in July, held at Baltimore's Downtown Cultural Arts Center, was not exactly a giant step forward in that regard.

The event was endorsed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, US Congressman Elijah Cummings, and Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts. It ran in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. But only a hundred people, some from outside of the city, showed up. And just about half of the 110 laptops DAS brought to the event were given away in exchange for firearms—many of which had previously been hidden away by their owners for decades.

Few of the people who showed up signed up for the training that was supposed to be the giveaway's much bigger hook—CompTIA A+ computer technician and other computer skills certification classes.

"We had 15 people sign up for classes," Lucas told me when I visited DAS' downtown Baltimore offices that week. "I think it was low because there was a lot of hesitation for people to write something down and put their name somewhere, since it's the first time it's been done. I think because of the fear that it wasn't a totally anonymous thing, the people weren't pumped to do it. I think the next time we do it, we'll do it as 'come to sign up for computer classes' and say you don't have to bring a gun to sign up for the training."

So the giveaway's direct results were modest at best, but it prompted an outpouring of support from inside and outside the city (besides some criticism from Second Amendment advocates). "People liked it because it gives people hope," Lucas told me a few days after the giveaway. "I've had so many e-mails from people that it's like, I want to do this in every city, every state," Lucas told me.

And again, it raised the visibility of Lucas' organization. DAS received money from a number of businesses to support the giveaway specifically. Sadly, this higher profile hasn't translated into wider financial support for Lucas' one-two punch of tech reformation. Not yet, at least.

Listing image by Aurich Lawson