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.

Banking's Most Innovative CIO

As you may know I used to work for a research and consulting firm focusing on financial services technology. Most of my clients were banks and vendors to banks. I get many of the trade emails and I thought this one might be of interest:

Bank Systems & Technology is accepting nominations for September 2007 "Innovative CIOs" issue. The person must be a senior technology executive at a bank (CIO, CTO, EVP or VP in charge of a line of business technology, such as e-business strategy, customer solutions, etc.). Keep in mind that bankers can be from non-U.S.-based institutions as well.

Your role in nominating potential candidates will be completely confidential. This year's nominees will be honored at the Bank Systems & Technology Executive Summit, to be held Sept. 23-26 at the Royal Palms Resort and Spa in Phoenix. Please provide the following information on your nominee (as much data as you can provide will be helpful):
Nominee's name, Title, Bank name, Contact information (if possible)

Tell us in just a few sentences why you think this person should be included in BS&T's 2007 Innovative CIOs feature. Deadline for nominations is Friday, June 1, 2007. E-mail all submissions to mbritz@cmp.com with "CIO 2007" in the subject line.

The Future of Work

I'm currently taking an organizational design class with Professor Tom Malone. The class focuses on what future organizations will look like. His book, "The Future of Work," makes the assertation that the reduction of communication costs has been the driving factor in the development of new organizations such as Wikipedia and InnoCentive. This is a speech he gave in 2005.

http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail731.html

Clayton Christensen Speech

Take a listen to Clayton Christensen's keynote speech at the at the 2004 Open Business Conference. It runs 1:48:43 but you can download the file and listen to it on your iPod later.

http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail135.html

MIT Deshpande Center IdeaStream

The MIT Deshpande Ceneter will be holding their annual IdeaStream Symposium on April 12th 2007. This is an invite-only event that brings together venture capitalists, MIT researchers, and successful entrepreneurs. Focus areas include energy, health care, transportation, and communications. To get an invite you must submit your idea by March 1st, 2007.

http://web.mit.edu/deshpandecenter/ideastream2007/showcase.html

Wharton Technology Conference

Wharton is hosting a technology conference this Friday, February 23rd, focusing on monetizing innovation. Topics include clean technology, digital content, globalization in venture capital, e-fraud, and more. It looks like they have a good list of speakers including the CIO of FedEx Robert Carter, Keith Rabois VP of Business Development at LinkedIn, Marc Pecen VP of Advanced Technology at RIM, and Anil Vijendran Director of Mobile User Experience at Motorola.
http://www.whartontechconference.com/