Austin Startup Week kicks off Tuesday, hopes to become point of international interest
BY JETTÉ MOMANT Scientific American Magazine and Wired Magazine recently ranked Austin as one of the top 10 major tech cities in terms of "geek friendliness," coming in fourth place behind Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The high ranking is largely due to the per capita amount of stores that sell tech gadgets, the availability of free, wireless Internet, how many technology jobs were in the region and the presence of an "active geek community." Austin’s technologically embracing culture makes it the ideal place to host the first Austin Startup Week, a tech entrepreneurial “unconference” from Tuesday, September 6 - Saturday, September 10. Jacqueline Hughes, a community advocate for local tech startups, founded Austin Startup Week to spark new leaders, new companies and new ideas. The goal is to enhance the local entrepreneurial scene and create an environment that brings startups, developers, marketers, UI/UXers, college students, recent graduates and investors together in Austin. The hopes are that after rallying together for five days of events, tech companies will decide to move new business ventures to Austin and that more tech talent will relocate. Some of the supporters and participants include Infochimps, Austinpreneur Joshua Baer, Twilio, Austin’s economic developer of emerging technology, Eve Richter, the Dachis Group’s Bryan Menell, Damon Clinkscales, and the true Austin startup incubators Cospace and Conjunctured. Hughes, a self-described “student of the world, startup junkie and big dreamer who’s still in alpha,” decided to found Austin Startup Week after attending Boulder Startup Week in Colorado a year ago. “I saw that it wasn’t the big firms that were organizing, but rather new people taking initiatives to draw attention to Boulder’s tech scene and entice companies and new talent to relocate to Boulder,” says Hughes of the week-long event that excelled in placing a spotlight on Boulder’s burgeoning tech scene. Although companies such as HomeAway, WhaleShark Media, 58Phases and Evernote have garnered media attention in Austin, Hughes felt that more awareness needed to be placed on Austin’s smaller, developing tech players. “Startups aren’t getting covered in the bigger tech blogs,” says Hughes. “The five-day event will help put Austin on the map as far as funding and the attainment of more media attention so more companies expand here and even more talent moves here.” The collaborative and crowd-sourced nature of the Boulder Startup Week unconference was based on the premise that, in any professional gathering the audience—not just those selected to speak on stage—has interesting thoughts, insights and expertise to share, and seemed like the perfect model for Austin’s bootstrapped culture. Hughes started piecing together Austin’s event at the end of May and quickly made the planning process her full-time job. She leveraged the relationships she’d cultivated when attending over 100 events in 2010 to quickly orchestrate the unconference. “Because of the relationships developed during these events, I was able to easily drop a note to someone and ask for their assistance with assembling the event schedule.” Strategically scheduled, the first Austin Startup Week revolves around events already taking place such as Capital City Demo Day, API Hack Day, Austin Young Chamber of Commerce Office Space Quote-A-Long at Alamo Drafthouse, and Big Data Love Happy Hour. “I reached out to different companies and organizations that were already putting on tech related events and asked if they’d be interested in being incorporated into Austin Startup Week.” Austin-preneur Josh Baer, Managing Director at Capital Factory was one of the first people Hughes connected with. “He was extremely receptive when I first approached him,” she says. “I think he sees something missing here too, and he was willing to step up and be a leader.” “When Jacqueline reached out to me I immediately said ‘Yes’,” said Baer. “We were already bringing in dozens of investors that week from outside Austin for the Capital Factory Demo Day. Bringing in entrepreneurs and engineers at the same time is a wonderful synergy. That's what Austin needs right now: more talent and more money for early stage companies. … I'm glad to see that Startup Week is getting widespread support from dozens of local startups and hundreds of participants.” Hughes has enlisted the help of the large and local HomeAway and Dachis Group as well as smaller and medium sized companies like Infochimps, which is cosponsoring the Demo Crawl and hosting API Hack Day and Big Data Love Happy Hour. “As a homegrown Austin startup, it seemed all too fitting to be one of the collaborating partners on the event,” says Winnie Hsia, Community Manager at Infochimps. “We are looking forward to meeting lots of great new people and geeking out on Big Data, a monthly happy hour held to encourage big data developers, startups and others to come together to share their common passion for Big Data. And our API Hack Day is particularly compelling - it's always incredibly exciting to see what some sleep deprivation, hard work and Red Bull can produce!” Other networking activities during Austin Startup Week include: an ATX Startup Crawl, a Startup Bazaar; showcasing new and established tech startups, The NextFest; an interactive series on technology and social entrepreneurship, and WeStart, an enlightening evening where speakers from the community share an idea they had and how they did or did not accomplished it. Speakers include: Garann Means, Austin All-Girl Hack Night, Eric Silverstein, The Peached Tortilla, Scot Maitland, Live Oak Pharmacy, Eric Katerman, Forecast, Brandon Wiley,Freefalling: 100% Cloud. Reservations can be made via their Plancast event page. Both Hughes and Baer view Austin Startup Week as a tremendous opportunity to establish a yearly event to further bolster growth in Austin. They would like to see Startup Week become the internationally recognized time of year when people visit and experience Austin. “Austin is already the most desirable startup city to move to,” says Baer. “People in California, Boston and Miami are saying, ‘I want to move to Austin’ without even knowing a specific job that they want. Startup Week can be a catalyst to draw more talent to Austin and to make them more likely to find a job... It's not a music festival, or a film festival, or a tradeshow. Startup Week is a celebration of everything geeky in Austin.” http://austin.culturemap.com/newsdetail/09-02-11-15-07-austin-startup-week-kicks-off-on-tuesday/?utm_source=Austin+Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=55f022b2a6-Daily_Digest_Austin_2011_09_03&utm_medium=email -- Our Web site: http://www.RefreshAustin.org/ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Refresh Austin" group. 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