SOMEWHAT FRANK

Digital Capital Week Coming to DC In June

I am pleased to announce the creation of Digital Capital Week (DCWEEK), a 10 day festival in Washington D.C. focused on technology, innovation and all things digital in our nation’s capital.

Over the last four years, I have spent many hours working on TECH cocktail with the mission of helping to better connect and amplify the local technology signal in local under served communities. In the process, many ideas have popped up but not every idea comes to fruition. The concept of a week long tech focused set of activities came onto my radar in the fall of 2008 after meeting with Vivek Kundra who was then CTO of DC. After a few meetings, fellow DC'ers Nick O'Neill, Peter Corbett, Shana Glickfield and others began to plan a tech week to take place in May or June 2009. As it turns out, other priorities crept into our lives so the tech week never materialized. Also with the new U.S. President elected, Vivek Kundra, moved up to take on a new role as Federal Chief Information Officer so working with us on a tech week in DC became a lower priority.

So while that tech week may have died, I am excited about the creation of DCWEEK, as iStrategyLabs has teamed with Shiny Heart Ventures (I am a Co-Founder) to co-produce the 10 days of festivities. DCWEEK has support from the WDCEP (Washington DC Economic Partnership), DC Office of Planning, CTDC (Cultural Tourism DC), OCTO (DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer) and the city’s BIDS (Business Improvement Districts).

DCWEEK is free to the first 2,000 to attend - registration is open - RSVP HERE. 

Ways You Can Participate:

1. Attend! Register here: http://dcweek.eventbrite.com and build an itinerary here: http://bit.ly/dcwcal. Most events won’t be populated until late Spring.
2. Host an event/session.
3. Lead/participate in a project - Digital Capital Week is not just 10 days of parties and sessions. It’s also an opportunity for you to collaborate on a project with others. If you’d like to participate in a project, please use the event RSVP to indicate your lever of interest.
4. Sponsor or Partner with DCWEEK - contact DJ Saul or Frank Gruber.

Be sure to connect with DCWEEK on Facebook & Twitter.

I will also be hosting a mega TECH cocktail DC that week on June 17th so be sure to RSVP for TECH cocktail too. It should be a fabulous week in June in Washington, D.C. so I would highly advise you to book your travel now and come out to DC for a week of festivities.

TECH cocktail DC 7 Showcases Six Startups

This past week we had a super showing at TECH cocktail DC 7 which was previewed in the November issue of DC Magazine. It was great to be able to showcase another handful of local start-ups. With the holidays right around the corner it was great to be able to catchup with a crowd of a couple hundred DC area tech enthusiasts and share in a holiday cocktail.

The event was sponsored by Winamp which has been around awhile but is making a resurgence with it's latest offering. I remember using Winamp back in my fraternity house when we hosted events and festivities (think Animal House but in Indiana). It's great to hear it is continuing to improve the media player experience and platform. As an Intel Insider for going on two years I was also excited and thankful for Intel's support as a sponsor. Intel also kicked off a contest to win a HP Envy Beats laptop over on TECH cocktail. Good luck to everyone that enters, contest ends December 17th at midnight EST.

Tis The Season For 2 More TECH cocktail Events

It has been a rather eventful year for TECH cocktail, a community building media startup, that I co-founded in 2006. We are wrapping up another year with two more TECH cocktail events one in DC on Thursday, December 3rd and our final 2009 event in Chicago on Thursday, December 10th. We have some great sponsors like Intel and Winamp and more and about 20+ never before seen start-ups showing off their products or services in an expo style.

Wow, these events will be our 10th and 11th events this year. Hope you can make it to DC or Chicago for one of these events - tis the season to TECH cocktail.