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Future of D.C., Next Steps

Posted by Nick O'Neill on February 27th, 2008 2:18 PM

Last week I wrote a post that got a lot of buzz going about the D.C. technology and entrepreneurship community. I’ve been thinking heavily about what the best next steps are and I think I’ve come up with a pretty good first step. The Social Times is going to launch a monthly pitch event. At the event, one entrepreneur will be chosen to do a 7-minute pitch to a board of local entrepreneurs, executives and technologists. That entrepreneur will take questions from the board for 15-minutes and then receive questions from an audience of no more than 150 people for another 10 to 15 minutes.

There is the potential to expand this to more than one pitch per event but we are limiting it for now. I will also be partnering with the entrepreneurship clubs at local business schools so that MBA students also have the opportunity to pitch. This is simply a first step to building the buzz around D.C. It is our duty to attend these events and foster an environment in which risk taking and failure is accepted. While that community may not be for everybody in D.C., it still exists.

Following the event there will be a happy-hour where people can network and discuss the future of the D.C. technology scene. There is one requirement of you attending this event: you must blog about it! D.C. is in need of amplifying the signal. Many people commented that D.C. will never be like Silicon Valley or “The Alley” in New York City. I agree but this doesn’t mean that we can’t have a loud voice.

The focus of the Social Times is the convergence of social technology, advertising and new media. The primary participants in this convergence is investors, entrepreneurs, journalists and advertisers. This event is focused on the investors and entrepreneurs. Of course since I’m in D.C. this will be the first city that the events take place and I hope that this contributes to building the technology and entrepreneurship community that we are all hoping to be a part of.

I will be announcing the date, time and location in the coming weeks so stay tuned. If you want to participate, we are looking for sponsors to support, entrepreneurs to pitch and experienced professionals that would like to advise. Send all inquiries to contact [at] socialtimes [dot] com. Also, if you have any location suggests or would like to host it yourself, please inquire via the email address provided!

Any suggestions? Post them in the comments and let’s keep the movement going!

Posted in D.C.
  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under D.C.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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