Thursday, April 23, 2009

So Many San Francisco Tech Events

Things have been busy lately- very busy. Since moving from Boston in August, I've been immersing myself in the SF tech community. Although Boston has some great events (like Mobile Monday), it seems like SF has about 10 times the number of events. Over the last few weeks I've been to SF New Tech, Web 2.0 Expo, and Startup Weekend. In addition, there are are another half dozen events that made it on to my schedule. Whether you're job hunting or just looking to get involved in the tech community, here are my best of San Francisco tech events.

SF New Tech
This is consistently one of the best tech events in the Bay Area. From the venue, to the format, to the attendees, everything about this event is great. It is usually held once a month at Mighty in Potrero Hill. Presentations are 5 minutes with an additional 5 minutes of questions, and plenty of time for networking before and after. Even if you're not in the area you can watch the live stream through the website. The last SF New Tech featured Twittfilter, AdCause, and Pixelpipe among others.

Startup Weekend
This international event brings together developers, business people, and "cooks" who want to pitch their ideas, build a team, and work on a project over the course of a weekend. At the recent Startup Weekend SF over 150 people show up and worked on 23 different projects (including my own cheap parking mobile app). About 80% of the teams had a product to demo by the end of the weekend and many of them are currently moving forward with their projects. For a great recap of the weekend check out this blog post.

Plug and Play Tech Center
PnP is a tech incubator that has three locations around the Bay Area. The events they hold at the Sunnyvale location are a great place to meet people working on early stage startups. The guys who run PnP have their pulse on the VC community and help tech entrepreneurs understand how to found and grow their companies. Check out their monthly event calendar here.

If you're interested in keeping up to date on t the latest events check out this great newsletter. Also, feel free to let me know what interesting events I've left off.