Wow… what a long way we’ve come. In February 2006, I started nextNY because the only community-wide event in town was the NY Tech Meetup and, at the time, it didn’t have much community about it. I think I was member #71 and now it’s got over 10,000. At the same time, the NY tech community has exploded with events, both educational and social. One look at GarysGuide and you can get quickly overwhelmed.
A number of people asked me at recent nextNY events how they can find out about what’s going on. Pointing a busy entrepreneur or executive to the nextNY listserv, which buzzes all day with discussion of memory caches, CMS’s, and finding a bookkeeper clearly isn’t the answer.
Therefore, I’ve decided to take the attendee lists from the last two Shakeshack events and some recent nextNY talks and start a once a week e-mail newsletter as a curated version of what’s going on around town and in the online communities as well. In the future, I’ll also be highlighting some open job positions, maybe some companies, and maybe just some recommendations on people that you should follow. If you’d like to sign up for the list, just go here. It’s going to look pretty texty and unformatted for a bit, but I’ll dress it up soon.
Event of the Week:
The Net Neutrality TechDebate, an Oxford style competitive back and forth on what is probably the most important topic in technology today that few of us have a clue about.
The debate will be held on Tuesday, November 17th at the IAC Building, 555 W 18th St btw 10th & 11th ave. Doors open at 7:00 PM. **RSVP here**
The Debaters
Against
James Assey - Executive Vice President, National Cable and Telecommunications Association
Robert Quinn - Senior Vice President-Federal Regulatory, AT&T
Christopher Yoo - Professor of Law and Communication; Director, Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, UPenn Law
For
Tim Wu - Coined the term "Network Neutrality"; Professor of Law, Columbia Law
Brad Burnham - VC, Union Square Ventures
Nicholas Economides - Professor of Economics, Stern School of
Business, New York University.
Can't make it?
The debate will be streamed live at: http://www.livestream.com/techdebate
A podcast will be available after the event at: http://tech-debate.com
Would rather drink?
Check out the NYVC Happy Hour instead.
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This week is O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo at the Javits Center. By registering for an Expo Pass, you can get in free to see all the keynotes, the sponsored sessions, Web2Open, Launch Pad, and the Birds of a Feather sessions.
Here’s what you won’t want to miss:
Monday
Ignite NYC – 5 minutes, 20 slides. Geeks + Slideshows = Awesomeness
7PM at New World Stages: 340 West 50th Street
Tuesday
2PM: A Conversation with Caterina Fake Jennifer Pahlka (Code for America), Caterina Fake (Hunch)
2:25PM: Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media danah boyd (Microsoft Research)
Wednesday
2:20pm A Conversation about the Realtime Web Brady Forrest (O'Reilly Media, Inc.), John Borthwick (betaworks)
Thursday
9:15am A Conversation with Beth Noveck Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.), Beth Noveck (Executive Office of the President/OSTP) <—Yes, *the* President
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It’s also Entrepreneur Week and there are a couple of noteworthy panels. Unfortunately the event is sold out, but there will be a livestream available on their site soon.
I think the pick of the conference is this panel at 2:15PM on Thursday:
The Revenue Inflection Point: The New Reality of Scaling a Business to $100MM in Revenue
MODERATOR: Bob Tedeschi, New York Times Technology Columnist
PANELISTS:
Stephen Messer, Co-Founder of Linkshare
Omar Amanat, Entrepreneur in Residence, Wharton School of Business
Marc Cenedella, Founder & CEO of TheLadders.com
Nancy Pedot, Former CEO of Gymboree & Party City
Chris McCann, President of 1-800 Flowers.com
Also right up there is this Friday panel at 10:30AM:
A Roadmap for the Entrepreneur Pt. 2: Top Venture Capitalists Reflect
MODERATOR: Murat Aktihanoglu, Founder of Centrl & Entrepreneurs Roundtable
PANELISTS:
Albert Wenger, Partner at Union Square Ventures
Jim Robinson, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of RRE Ventures
Anthony Marino, Managing Partner at Virgin Investments
Howard Morgan, Partner at First Round Capital
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This weekend is Startup Weekend. Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.
David Kidder will be speaking Friday night while Nate Westheimer, Sam Lessin, and I will be on the Sunday night panel.