Words from Skip : “Techlandia” Invades Webvisions NYC

"Techlandia” Invades Webvisions NYC

Brad Smith, the founder of Hot Pepper Studios and of Webvisions
Photo by Kent Derek, Courtesy of Webvisions

Several months ago, Brad Smith, the founder of Hot Pepper Studios and of Webvisions, mentioned to me that he planned to take Webvisions on the road in 2012, with events in New York (January), Barcelona (July), and Chicago (fall). We subsequently spent the next couple of months building out programming for an Oregon-themed day at the conference with participation from Oregon Film, Business Oregon, Greater Portland, Inc., PDC, Hillsboro, Gresham, and Beaverton, as well as PIE, Bridge City Ventures, Laika, Rogue Brewing, and some Oregon wineries.

The Oregon Day consisted of a series of talks and panels highlighting Oregon companies and both public and private initiatives in the areas of open government, UX/UI design, animation, mobile, and digital media. There was also a "demo” component where Oregon and NYC startups pitched their products and services to NYC investors. The Oregon Day culminated with a party at the Hudson Hotel that featured a special behind the scenes preview of Laika’s new feature film, Paranorman and a screening of the third episode of Portlandia, all served with Oregon wine, beer, and spirits.

Solid attendance during the Oregon Day portion of Webvisions owed in part to the fact that Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein from the IFC television series Portlandia made a guest appearance. Fred and Carrie are on a national promotional tour for the show that is selling out in major markets.

Fred Armisen from Portlandia
Photo by Eli Castillo, Courtesy of Webvisions

Everyone I spoke with during my meetings in NYC—including investors, entrepreneurs, tech and economic development professionals—had great things to say about the juxtaposition of Portlandia, which lampoons certain cultural quirks of the Greater Portland area, with news about a resurgent tech community in Oregon. Apart from the TV show, three things are garnering attention for Portland among tech talent in major markets like New York—1) the local startup scene, which has been generating consistently positive press over the past few years; 2) community "platforms” like CivicApps that leverage the tech community to solve pressing social, civic, or resource-oriented challenges; and 3) large tech conferences like OSCON, which bring in talent from around the world for a week of knowledge-sharing and collaboration with members of the local tech community. Not surprisingly, a vibrant hacker and startup community coupled with opportunities to work on important and interesting projects are important considerations for tech talent.

Brad Smith, awarding raffle winners with Portland theme gifts!
Photo by Kent Derek, Courtesy of Webvisions

On Thursday, we met with the team from NYCEDC—New York City’s equivalent to PDC--which is responsible for working with New York City’s software and digital media industries. While the scale of New York’s tech community and it’s resources are astounding, I was struck by the similarity of our respective programs. In particular, NYC focuses on three areas with regard to support for its technology community: 1) capital; 2) space; and 3) knowledge sharing/community. Over the past year or so, the PDX11 effort has focused on 1) capital; 2) mentorship; and, 3) knowledge sharing/community. Interestingly, PDX11 evolved over the past year to a point where the knowledge sharing/community effort is integrated with the mentorship effort (www.epdx.org), and space has cropped up as an issue—especially for early-stage tech companies as well as those that are scaling rapidly. Space also is an issue at times for the Portland area’s 70+ software user groups.

Despite having Wall Street and ranking second in the country behind Silicon Valley for the amount of venture capital attracted during the past couple of years, getting access to seed capital for New York’s technology startups continues to be an area of focus and concern. Interestingly, New York has a fund they recently created that is very similar to the Portland Seed Fund, called the University Entrepreneurship Fund. It has $22MM under private management, $3MM of which was contributed by the City of New York. In comparison, the Seed Fund has about $3MM under management.

Compared to Portland and other communities around Oregon, the City of New York takes a very active role in funding incubators, accelerators, and flexible space for startups. In all, NYCEDC helps to fund 10 different accelerator programs in NYC ranging from food innovation to technology.

Regarding the talent crunch, which, like most tech communities around the country, is also hurting NYC startups, NYCEDC has two impressive programs designed to address this issue. One program is a "startup roadshow” where NYCEDC takes representatives from NYC tech startups on a tour of elite universities in search of top talent. The other is a summer internship program in partnership with a number of New York-based VC firms, and Columbia Business School.

While in New York, I was invited to attend the CleanWeb Hackathon at NYU. The panel that was organized to judge the apps, which had been created over a 36-hour period, consisted of Fred Wilson, a principal in Union Square Ventures, Rachel Sterne, Mayor Bloomberg’s Chief Digital Officer, and Evan Korth of Quora. While leaving the event to head to the airport, I ran into Aneesh Chopra, the former United States CTO and creator of data.gov, among other opengov innovations. He was stopping by to check out the apps.

My biggest takeaway from the CleanWeb Hackathon was the fact that each app was judged not only on its technological merits, but also its commercial viability. When NYC launched Big Apps, its equivalent to CivicApps, NYC included a commercial viability component to their apps contests and hackathons from the very beginning. To be sure, while only a couple of companies that have participated in Big Apps have received funding from VCs, the presence of VCs and serial entrepreneurs at these hackathons helps to further connect the community of technologists and hackers with entrepreneurs and investors, providing useful opportunities for knowledge sharing and networking. Plus, this is more than a passing hobby or community service for these entrepreneurs and investors who are giving their time to these events. They know full well that the market for government technology is enormous—approximately $180 billion by 2014—and the bar for innovation is set relatively low.

Presenting on the Panel: Apps for Change: How Open Data and a Few Good Apps are Changing Government.
Photo by Kent Derek, Courtesy of Webvisions

On Friday at Webvisions, I was invited to participate on a panel focusing on open government initiatives at the state and local levels, which included representatives from NYC’s Office of IT, and Andrew Hoppin, the former New York State Senate CIO, who was responsible for overhauling the New York Senate’s IT and civic engagement infrastructure in a year, while saving the Senate $1MM in IT-related expenses.

My presentation focused on a project that I worked on while at the City of Portland called CitySync, which is a customizable platform that will be integrated into Portland Online. It will enable businesses and residents to set up widgets that share hyper-local data related to crime, transit, etc., as well as news and social media feeds on neighborhood events, and make it easier to access City services through a single interface. Significantly, CitySync builds on CivicApps by creating a platform with millions of users right out of the gate, on which local software developers can build apps. The more cities that adopt this platform, which is open source, the greater the potential market for local app developers. After my presentation, the City of New York expressed interest in potentially adopting this platform.

Bob Richardson, Jeff Merritt and Andrew Hoppin.
Panel Discussion: Apps for Change: How Open Data and a Few Good Apps are Changing Government.
Photo by Photo by Kent Derek, Courtesy of Webvisions

If Webvisions returns to NYC next year, we have an opportunity to leverage these new contacts to build an even bigger event around technology startups and investors and highlight more of our community tech projects. In this way, we can continue to build stronger connections for Oregon tech firms and professionals to one of the world’s biggest markets.