via Northside Festival
Since 2009, brothers Scott and Daniel Stedman have been hosting the Northside Festival in Williamsburg and Greenpoint as a cultural showcase for emerging indie bands, filmmakers, and other artistic aspirants of what one might call the McCarren Park Kickball Guild. In fact, the Stedman brothers have staked their careers on the better borough. Ten years ago, they launched L Magazine. Their company, Northside Media Group, is also responsible for Brooklyn Magazine, BAMBill and Summerscreen. “Fairly early on,” CEO Scott Stedman told Betabeat, “We saw that Brookyn was becoming a national adjective for what’s next in the creative community.”
But this year, the brothers are doing something a little different with their “discovery festival”–setting aside two days in the week-long schedule to celebrate the newest members of Brooklyn’s creative class.
“A few years back, people would be graduating college and launching bands and today we feel as often one roommate will be launching a band and the other will be launching a new app or a new website,” said Mr. Stedman. “They’ll be living together and hanging out together and they often come out of Brooklyn and identify themselves as New York.” Yeah, we think we know the type.
To cater to that crowd, on June 14 to June 15, Northside Entrepreneurship conference will feature more than 40 panels, nearly 100 speakers (like Bre Pettis from MakerBot, David Pakman from Venrock, Paul Berry from Soho Tech Labs) and 20,000 square feet of exhibit space in Williamsburg to cover topics like “Future of Education with Skillshare, Codeacademy, 2Tor, and Grovo” or “The partisan power of digital content.” Separate contingents will be devoted to innovation and disruption–is there anything else, really?–in different industries, such as a MusicNOW Summit (featuring Gza from the Wu Tang Clan), Social Cinema Showcase, and Media Makers Collective.
Now that the city has decided to back a second tech campus in downtown Brooklyn, the festival just announced today that it will partner with NYU-Poly to create ”Downtown Startup Campus” on June 14 at their Metrotech location where NYU professors will challenge “the innovators they most admire on what drives their creativity.”
“When I started my company, everyone wasn’t aspiring to become an entrepreneur,” recalled Mr. Stedman. “It was that old-fashioned, oak-panelled word. I mean the word itself has changed in two years. When I graduated college, it was like that’s what Henry Ford was. It was the longest, dumbest word ever. Now it represents innovation and creation. It’s exciting and it’s what young, interesting people are aspiring to be identified as.”
Mr. Stedman is not short on hope for New York City as an innovation capital. “It’s creating a new kind of entrepreneurship economy that is systemically different from any kind of entrepreneurship community that has ever existed and it will eventually change everything and touch everything,” he said. Well, don’t hold back or anything.
But if you ask Mr. Stedman, the epicenter is happening a little further East than one might think. “Even in Union Square and Flatiron, all the engineers–half the people there are coming out of Brooklyn. Even if it’s hard to define in words, the zeitgeist is fairly intuitive: the spirit of Brooklyn is driving innovation.”
Here are some of the panelists:
Charlie O’Donnell Brooklyn Bridge Ventures
Alexis Tryon Artsicle
William Etundi Artistswanted
Jim Spanfeller The Daily Meal
Shane Snow contently.com
Kellan Elliot-McCrea Etsy
Chad Phillips Fab
Elias Roman Songza
Lauren Indvik (moderator) Mashable
Michele Madhok SheFinds
Whitney Hess
GZA Wu Tang Clan
Anand Giridharadas (moderator) NY Times
Ayah Bdeir LittleBits
Bre Pettis MakerBot
Duann Scott Shapeways
Nora Abousteit kollabora
Andrew Toy Enterproid
Jeff Fernandez Grovo
John Katzman 2tor
Mike Karnjanaprakorn Skillshare
Avner Ronen Boxee
Seth Frader-Thompson EnergyHub
Neil Patel KISSMetrics
Andrew Rasiej Personal Democracy Forum
Eli Pariser The Filter Bubble
Brian Schechter HowaboutWe
Evan Frank Onefinestay.com
Brett Martin Sonar.me
Rafat Ali Skift
Paul Berry CasaHop
Steve Cohn Irrive
Paul Lightfoot brightfarms
Britta Riley Window Farms
David Pakman Venrock
Jessi Hempel (moderator) Fortune
Nicole Davis Brooklyn Based
Billy Campion The Bogmen
Brandon Mason Juxtaposed Music
Camille Hackney Atlantic Records
Corey Maass Gelform
David Weiss SonicScoop
Dez Dickerson Pavillion
Donald Woodard Esq. Gordon & Rees
Erik Masone Deep Freeze Music
Howard Han Reverbnation
Jake Simon BMI
Jason Boner The Dharma Body
Jason Herskowitz Tomahawk/Official.fm
Jessica Weiner Ultra International Music Publishing
Jon Maples Rhapsody
Kevin M. Wilson ESPN
Laura Wilson World Cafe Live
Leah Joy Malberg TicketWeb
Lynda McLaughlin LYVA Music
Neeta Ragoowansi Sound Exchange
Paul-Anthony Surdi Crowd Control Music
Richard Slatter WeAreHunted
Seth Hillinger Music Tech Meetup
Troy Hansbrough Sonicbids
Valerie Gurka Knitting Factory
Christy Tanner TV Guide
David Larkin Gowatchit
Mike Knowlton Murmur
Aina Abiodun Story Code
Blaine Graboyes
Mark Harris Broadcastr.com
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