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

This Sunday I'm co-organizing The Big Apple Smackdown! (the Silicon Alley ping-pong tournament) at SPiN. Duking it out will be some of the city's hottest startup entrepreneurs, execs, investors and bloggers, including: Kevin Ryan (founder/CEO, Gilt Groupe), Seth Godin (author, Tribes), Jared Hecht (cofounder, GroupMe), Brian Schechter (cofounder, HowAboutWe), Malcolm Ong (cofounder, SkillShare), Jordan Crook (writer, TechCrunch), Nick Ganju (cofounder, ZocDoc), Gene Munster (senior analyst, Piper Jaffray), Jordan Cooper (partner, Lerer Ventures), Kathryn Minshew (founder, DailyMuse), David Aronoff (partner, Flybridge Capital), Vin Vacanti (cofounder, Yipit) and many, many more! Featuring DJ Premiere of Gang Starr + Bunny Love. It's going to be an epic night of beats and bounce!! :)

Think your startup has what it takes? Then check out the "Who Would You Fund" TechStartup Challenge 2012, where I'll be one of the judges. It's a contest to find the best startup pitch videos out there. Add yours, and you just might win the opportunity to make a live pitch to the ARC Angel Round Capital Fund.

The good folks at the upcoming Angelhack hackathon (on November 17) are offering twenty free tickets to GarysGuide members. Just use the discount code GG.

It's also DataWeek, and there are a bunch of events as part of it, including Strata, PyData Conf & Hackathon, Data Business Meetup, DataGotham, Startup Showcase, BigDataCamp & more.

Don't miss the Software Engineers Job Fair this Tuesday. Later this week, my friends Jen and Allison are performing another edition of Blogologues (the spooky election special!) with an after-party at KGB. The latest entrant in the tech breakfast series is the Palisades Tech Breakfast, bringing together folks across the Hudson. Next month, IncubateNYC (which is redefining the incubation model) is organizing a bootcamp at Google. And Daniweb is throwing another bash, The Publishers meet Advertisers Cocktail Mixer, for Ad:Tech.

And now lets see whats going down in the Alley this week...

Ignite NYC 15 - Truth is a Moving Target: Oddities Anomalies and Wonders with Data
With talks by Hilary Mason ("In Search of an Optimal... Cheeseburger"), Max Shron ("How to Kill Your Grandmother with Statistics"), Erik Norlander ("Game Show Theory"), Andres Glusman ("The Truth Is Out There") and more.
Monday (Oct. 22), 6:30 p.m. @ Sheraton NY Metropolitan Ballroom, 811 7th Avenue

NYC Gaming October: Demo Night
Demos by Bruno Kruse (Enter Thy Name), Mike Christatos (Worm Run), Matt Parker (Recurse), Patrick Lynch (Escape Run), Jesse Freeman (Super Resident Raver), Christopher Garrett (QatQi) and Brian Chung (Carried Away).
Monday (Oct. 22), 6:30 p.m. @ Microsoft, 1290 Avenue of the Americas

Girls Who Code Inaugural Gala
Support the young women who are New York City's future entrepreneurs and engineers as they unveil the apps built during the Girls Who Code program.
Monday (Oct. 22), 6:30 p.m. @ New York Stock Exchange, 2 Broad Street

Tow-Knight October Startup Demo Night
Media startups demoing include Branch, Narratively, PolicyMic, Ganxy and Percolate.
Monday (Oct. 22), 6:30 p.m. @ CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, 219 W 40th Street

Wired for Change
Rockstar group of panelists including Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor, World Wide Web), Esther Dyson (investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist), Brad Burnham (cofounder, Union Square Ventures), Jon Leibowitz (chairman, FTC), Baratunde Thurston (author, How to Be Black) and others.
Tuesday (Oct. 23), 9 a.m. @ Ford Foundation, 320 E 43rd Street

New York Software Engineers (NYSE) Job Fair
Please bring your resume, working code and applications you've developed. There will be break-out rooms, talks from awesome speakers, and robots on patrol taking pictures!
Tuesday (Oct. 23), 5:30 p.m. @ AlleyNYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th floor

[DataWeek] NYC Data Business Meetup #9
With Mike Abbott (partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), Roger Ehrenberg (founder and managing partner, IA Ventures), Ping Li (general partner, Accel Partners) and Matt Ocko (cofounder and partner, Data Collective).
Tuesday (Oct. 23), 6 p.m. @ Bloomberg LP, 731 Lexington Avenue, 7th floor

Best Practices: Building a Successful Startup in NYC
With Wiley Cerilli (founder and CEO, SinglePlatform, acquired by Constant Contact for $100 million) and David Kidder (cofounder, SmartRay Network, acquired by LifeMinders for $36 million).
Tuesday (Oct. 23), 6:30 p.m. @ NYU Stern School of Business, 44 West Fourth Street, Room 2-60

StartOut Demo Day NYC 2012
Demos by Waywire, Artify, D'marie, Dtime, Fanatiks, Getbooked, Routehappy, Tasklite, Unigo, SocialPicks, SideTour, Wantmegetme and Zokos.
Tuesday (Oct 23), 6:30 p.m. @ Tribeca Grand Hotel, 2 6th Ave

FIT Presents: The Finance & Fashion Forum
A conversation on the state of the economy, with Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.
Tuesday (Oct. 23), 7 p.m. @ FIT - Morris W. and Fannie B. Haft Auditorium, Seventh Avenue at 27th Street

Startup Weekend Presents the Partnership Series
With Faye Iosotaluno (sr. director of biz dev, MTV Networks), Bill Shapiro (editor-at-large, Time Inc) and Shane Rahmani (VP, head of biz dev and strategy, Thrillist).
Tuesday (Oct. 23), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th floor

The Open Internet and the 2012 Election
A Conversation with Fred Wilson, Clay Shirky, and Susan Crawford.
Thursday (Oct. 25), 6 p.m. @ NYU Stern School of Business, 44 West 4th Street

Enterprise Tech Meetup: Making and Retaining Key Hires
Panelists include David Teten (Partner, ff Venture Capital), Sean Maclsaac (CTO, Yext) and Debbie Madden (Senior VP, Cyrus Innovation).
Thursday (Oct. 25), 7 p.m. @ Microsoft, 1290 Avenue of the Americas

The Fourth Annual HallowMEME Costume Party
Drinks, goodies, and other surprises provided by Tumblr and Giant Media.
Thursday (Oct. 25), 8:30 p.m. @ The Bell House, 149 7th Street

More events on the horizon...
All Things D: Dive Into Mobile on Oct 29 @ The Ritz-Carlton Battery Park
App Development for iPhone & iPad on Oct 29 @ 3rd Ward
#Startupfix at Culturefix on Oct 30 @ Culturefix
The {c}0dEd Costume Carousal! on Oct 31 @ Alley NYC
NYC FinTech Startup Weekend on Nov 02 @ Alley NYC
Ad:Tech New York on Nov 07 @ Javits Convention Center
Daniweb Presents: Publishers meet Advertisers Cocktail Mixer on Nov 07 @ Highland Park
Ingenuity 2012 on Nov 08 @ New World Stages
CapitalOnStage New York on Nov 09 @ Goodwin Procter at NY Times
Funding The Best In Global Innovation on Nov 13 @ SNR Denton
AngelHack Fall 2012 New York City on Nov 17 @ The AlleyNYC

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)