Restaurant Week, Fashion Week, Flood Awareness Week, Sunshine Week, Community Week … we could really go on all day. New York City is home to dozens of themed weeks aimed at boosting local NYC businesses, helping communities, aiding a cause, highlighting an industry, or educating people on a subject. Although most of the themed weeks are popular cultural occasions (Broadway Week and Restaurant Week are a couple of our favorites), there are many that would be helpful (and fun) for startups and entrepreneurs to participate in. We’ve put together this list of the top tech and startup related weeks. For each of the events, registration and, if necessary, ticketing purchases can be handled through the website.
Social Media Week
Social Media week takes place at various times throughout the year in cities around the world. The New York City week takes place in mid-February each year and brings in some of the top names in Social Media as speakers and panelists. Past years have included CEOs and founders such as Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Steve Case (AOL) and Eli Pariser (Upworthy).SMW combines business and pleasure by offering a host of events throughout the week in various formats from pitch competitions and panel discussions to networking mixers and charity fundraisers. Though the week’s topic is Social Media, SMW really demonstrates the full range of what that can mean – categories range from the expected topics of marketing and publicity to less expected topics such as politics and environment. The events are scattered at locations throughout the city and registration is individual for each one so check the website to see the lineup and choose what you’d like to attend.Since the week is open and collaborative, local companies can get involved by throwing their own social media related events (panels, networking events, debates, presentations, pitch competitions, etc.) during the week and submitting them to the SMW website.
Techweek
“Techweek’s mission is to showcase, celebrate and enable emerging innovation ecosystems in the great cities of America.” 2014 will be TechWeek’s second year in NYC after successfully launching in Chicago 2010. This week brings together entrepreneurs and visionaries working in the tech industry in NYC for a 7-day event aimed at encouraging startups, transitional companies, and established businesses to innovate in tech.Last year’s event included speakers from big names such as Google, MakerBot, TechCrunch, and Microsoft. The conference is broken up into summits such as “The Future of Media,” “Fashiontech,” “Finance 2.0,” “Gaming,” and “Startups.” Throughout the week, each summit showcases and exhibits products from their respective industries. The week includes conferences, expositions, parties, and a hiring fair. Attendees can choose the level of pass they’d like depending on how many of the summits and events they’d like to attend. If you’d like to get your brand out there in the NYC tech stratosphere you can request to become a speaker, or you can participate by sponsoring or volunteering.
Entrepreneur Week
Innovative technologies like 3D printing and app development have shifted the changing economic and technological world of doing business in favor of the entrepreneur. Entrepreneur Week takes place throughout the year at locations around the world and highlights the importance of entrepreneurs to local economies.New York City’s Entrepreneur Week takes place in early November and prides itself on helping the hopeful entrepreneur succeed by arming future entrepreneurs with helpful business skills, tools, networks, and resources.This week is full of speakers who have founded or co-founded a company of their own and have first-hand experience at becoming successful. The keynotes and presentations held throughout the week encourage attendees to transform their ideas into businesses, teach proper competitiveness, expand business knowledge, and produce useful social networks. The attendees range from venture capitalists and angel investors to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Internet Week
Internet week in NYC celebrates how the Internet has made great leaps to weave itself into nearly every moment, process, and movement in our lives. Internet Week annually commemorates information technology in both business and culture by reviewing technologies and programs released throughout the past year that involve working on the web and also looking at the places the Internet will take us.The week takes place in late spring and includes events at IWNY HQ at the Metropolitan Pavilion as well as Internet Week’s citywide events, which are presented by a multitude of local NYC businesses. The schedule for the week is separated between summits of tech, business, and media. All of the events are open to the public after purchasing and reserving the specific event tickets.
Advertising Week
Advertising Week (AW) strives to maintain its prestige of being the first annual gathering of marketing, advertising, and communication leaders in New York City. It facilitates a program for the industry to expand and connect a future generation into the business of marketing.With over 200 events taking place around the city during AW, headliner companies like Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Pepsi, and Calvin Klein present and give demonstrations on key business developments and industry challenges that affect the advertising industry. Surrounding seminars, workshops, panels, and events range in topic from digital storytelling, to predictive marketing, to advertising “battle of the bands.” The industry vertical summits of Advertising Week include Mobile, Social, Research/Data/ Analytics, and Content. Registration to attend the event-filled week is open to the public but must be done in advance via their website.
Startup Weekend
Startups have seemingly endless challenges from marketing, networking, and developing their product, to obtaining investors. Startup Weekend strives to make these challenges easier as it empowers startups to pitch their idea, learn new skills, and network with like-minded entrepreneurs by giving them a crash-course in business development and pitching. Although this is a few days shy of being a week-long event, Startup Weekend has been a global movement with over 1800 events in 120 countries, taking place in over 200 cities around the world.Startup Weekend NYC has a unique structure compared to NYC’s other themed weeks: registered participants must fit into a respective category depending on their skill set; they then pitch ideas to peers within their industry, and form groups around the most popular ideas; teams are created and participants spend the rest of the weekend in a “54-hour frenzy” to create business models in coding, designing, and marketing with help from their assigned coaches. On the final day, teams present their business models to entrepreneurial leaders for feedback. The final demo day is open to the public, though prior registration is required.
Creative Week
In a society where people are constantly bombarded with advertisements, creativity is critical in areas of advertising, marketing, branding, and design where attention grabbing materials are crucial to the success of companies.The events of Creative Week focus on the intersection of advertising, creativity and innovation. Taking place each year in late spring, the week brings together several events into one place: In addition to providing networking opportunities with other creative professionals and presentations from thought leaders in marketing industries, Creative Week also brings in the Young Ones Festival for students which “inspires and nurtures the next generation of advertising,” and The One Show, an awards ceremony for advertising and design professionals. Tickets come in many varieties depending on what creative industry you are particularly interested in or which events you’d like to attend.