This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder & CEO of GarysGuide, Mentor at ER Accelerator and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can follow him at @garysguide and reach him via email at gary [at] garysguide.com.

An absolutely crazy, crazzzzzzy week in tech coming up with a ton of really good events including hacker townhalls, demo days, Startup Weekends, TEDx-es, hack days, incubator openings, happy hours, roundtables and more. Lets take a look, shall we? ...

January Hacker Townhall
Pizza, beer and hanging out with other fellow hackers, technologists, tinkerers, and thinkers? Life just doesn't get better than that, my friend! :)
Monday, 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC Presents: Business Plan Presentations: Innovations in Digital Commerce
Panel Speakers include Albert Wenger (Partner, Union Square Ventures), David Teten (Partner, ff Venture Capital), Eric Nordlander (Engineering Partner, Google Ventures) and Sim Blaustein (Principal, BDMI). Companies presenting include Agnik (data analytics for distributed, mobile & embedded), Echoer (Finalist at Le Web), Moviecom.tv (Red Herring Global 2011 Winner), Megawatt Hour (decision-making platform for energy purchasing) and WishMash (The social wishlist platform).
Tuesday, 5:30 p.m. @ Chadbourne & Parke LLP, 30 Rockefeller Plaza

BMW i Ventures Incubator opening
With Mitchell Moss (Director, Rudin Center for Transportation Policy), Kurt Buecheler (VP BizDev, Streetline), Bill Schwebel (Senior VP, Inrix), John Schmid (Chairman, Green Parking Council), Anthony Eskinazi (CEO & Founder, ParkatmyHouse), Ulrich Quay (MD, BMW i Ventures) and Alexander Diehl (MD, BMW i Ventures).
Tuesday, 6 p.m. @ BMV i Ventures, 95 Morton St 7th Floor

Making Startups Work - Optimizing the Front End
With Damian Galarza (Thrillist), Pau Santesmasses (Tumblr), Mike Singleton (Foursquare), Ahmed Hashim (Etsy) and Benjamin Wilson (Refinery29).
Tuesday, 7 p.m. @ Refinery29, 30 Cooper Square 4th Floor

500 Startups Demo Day NYC
Back by popular demand! Go check out Startup Pirate (Aarrr!!!), Wearer of 500 Hats and Super Angel Extra-ordinaire Dave McClure and his 500 Startups Accelerator's 3rd batch (Fall 2011) of startups.
Wednesday, 10 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

Xconomy Forum: New York’s Venture Emergence
Rockstar speaker list including Fred Wilson (Founder & Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures), Todd Dagres (Founder & General Partner, Spark Capital), Barry Silbert (Founder & CEO, SecondMarket), Nick Beim (General Partner, Matrix Partners), Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and Alexis Maybank (CoFounders, Gilt Groupe), Rich Levandov (Managing Director, Avalon Ventures), Dave Morgan (Founder & CEO, Simulmedia), Peter Stern (CEO, bitly), Eric Wiesen, General Partner (RRE Ventures) and more.
Wednesday, 2 p.m. @ Apella Event Space at Alexandria Center, 450 East 29th Street 2nd Floor

The Business Side of Dating
Dating can be fun (or not). But there is no doubt that there is a lot of ka-ching! to be made in the business of dating. Featuring the-guy-who-started-it-all Gary Kremen (Founder, Match.com), Brian Schechter (HowAboutWe), Adam Sachs (Ignighter) and Dana Kanze (Moonit).
Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. @ Goodwin Procter, 620 Eighth Avenue Floor 26

BD Meetup Happy Hour
Boozin' and schmoozin' with the biz dev crowd!
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St

Expanding Your Business into Europe for Early Stage High Growth Companies (NY)
With Matt Meeker (Partner, Polaris Ventures), Terry Jost (CEO, Mycroft), Peter Melerud (CoFounder & COO, Kemp Technologies), Adrian Crawford (Partner, KPMG) and Mark Gallagher (SVP, Silicon Valley Bank).
Thursday, 6 p.m. @ Dogpatch Labs, 36 E 12th St

Meet DreamIt Alumni in NY
Interested in applying to DreamIt accelerator? Then go hang out with DreamIt alumni including Adapt.ly, ClothesHorse, Easel Learning, LearnBop, LetsGiftIt, Parse.ly, Postling and SeatGeek
Thursday, 6 p.m. @ Solas, 232 E 9th Street

Startup Roundtable Series 7 - Mobile
Panelists include Nihal Mehta (CEO, LocalResponse & Partner, ENIAC Ventures), Veronika Sonsev (CEO, inSparq.com & Founder, Women in Wireless) and Brett Martin (CEO, Sonar.me).
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. @ Select Office, 116 West 23rd Street

18th Annual Columbia Business School Private Equity & Venture Capital Conference
Throwing a little bit o' private equity into our usual mix of Startup and VC related events. Keynoting are Tim Draper (Founder, Draper Fisher Jurvetson), Bob Nardelli (CEO, Cerberus) and David Rubenstein (CoFounder & Managing Director, The Carlyle Group).
Friday, 12 a.m. @ Columbia Business School, Alfred Lerner Hall

NYC EDU Startup Weekend
StartupWeekend is back for another red-bull and pizza fueled all night coding and hacking and startupping weekend. This time the focus is on education. Oh yeah.
Friday, 6 p.m. @ The Mandell School, 795 Columbus Ave

API Hackday NYC
Time to get ur hack on, yo!
Saturday, 8 a.m. @ Mashery, 597 Broadway 2nd Floor

TEDxBigApple presents Disruptive Ideas
Its gonna be all about disruptive ideas with near-term impact in housing, biotech, local spaces, biomimicry, fashion, business and much more. Looks like its gonna be off the hook. :)
Saturday, 2 p.m. @ Saatchi & Saatchi, 375 Hudson

More on the horizon…
February 2012 NY Tech Meetup on Feb 08 @ NYU Skirball Center For The Performing Arts
#Techdrinkup (Open Bar) Huge Pre-Party for Social Media Week on Feb 09 @ The Parlour
2012 NYC Pipeline Fellowship Conference on Feb 10 @ Goodwin Procter
SecondMarket Presents: Capitalyze on Feb 15 @ Dream Downtown
NY Beta :: Media & Entertainment Edition on Feb 16 @ GreenSpaces
NYC Gaming February Meetup on Feb 23 @ General Assembly
Lean Startup Machine NYC on Feb 24 @ GrindSpace
Photo Hack Day 2 on Feb 25 @ General Assembly

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends!