Guests mingle on a Long Island City rooftop before demos begin

More than 150 people braved last night’s land hurricane--technically called a derecho--to attend Coalition for Queens’ second Queens Tech Meetup at Hunters Point Plaza in Long Island City.

Unfortunately, the crowd of young professionals was only able to enjoy rooftop views of the Manhattan skyline for a short while before the clouds came rolling in. Thankfully, the demos inside provided plenty of amusement, including a tug-of-war match and a feline photo shoot for mycatandi.com.

Charlie O’Donnell, a partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and the event’s first demonstrator, was astounded by the turnout of the meetup.

“I think I probably went to the fifth or sixth New York Tech Meetup and we were a whopping 30 people,” Mr. O’Donnell told the audience. “Now I look at like five times the amount of people in the room at the second Queens Tech Meetup and it’s really unbelievable.”

Mr. O’Donnell spoke about his outlook on the future of the tech scene in New York and how he sees Queens fitting into it.

“A couple of years from now you’re going to be able to walk across the bridge and go to one of the preeminent engineering and applied sciences school in the country and the only place you can walk to from there is Queens,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Obviously this is a transportation hub; it’s actually one of the few places that is convenient to get to via the G train.”

Last night’s event also included demonstrations from Skillshare, OKFocus and Aereo.

Leighann Farrelly, community development manager at Skillshare, an online learning marketplace, shared a free lesson in teamwork with the audience through a tug of war match. But she also shared news about Skillshare’s collaboration plans with Coalition for Queens to provide affordable, high-quality tech education in areas such as computer programming, digital marketing and entrepreneurship on CUNY campuses in Queens.

“We’re starting to see people in need of tech skills, and if you go through the traditional education spectrum, they’re super expensive and not that accessible,” Ms. Farrelly explained. “We have the same mission as Coalition for Queens, which is that we need to provide people with more opportunities to be a bigger part of the New York tech scene.”

OKFocus, a full service digital agency run by Ryder Ripps and Jonathan Vingiano that's notorious for PR stunts like that fake Kanye West site, was also in attendance. They demoed a new website called My Cat and I that detects cats in photos. The team explained that the site demonstrates OKFocus’ goal to create concept-driven work that stands out in function and design. Plus, the Internet's affection for cats is well-documented.

Finally, it was Aereo's turn. Nick Sallon, the startup's director of content and business development, and Chris Mckay, Aereo's customer service manager were both on hand to demo the subscription service that enables New York City residents to view locally broadcasted television streamed online. Aereo, introduced by Coalition for Queens founder Jukay Hsu as "a TV platform so disruptive everyone's suing it," recently won a dismissal of injunction brought against it in a lawsuit by 17 broadcasters including ABC, NBC and CBS.

A few months ago, Aereo's CEO Chet Kanojia demoed his service to a packed house at the New York Tech Meetup in Manhattan, eliciting a roar of wild applause.

In Queens, the Aereo team showcased the service’s features and carefully addressed questions from the audience concerning the lawsuit. While they declined to provide much insight on the legal battle, Aereo's representatives told the audience that the startup is considering plans for growth because of its recent lawsuit win. However, they haven't yet decided which cities will be included in its expansion.

We just hope it's not Kansas City, since getting Google Fiber first has undoubtedly spoiled them.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated that Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia was present at the Queens Tech Meetup and demoed the service. Betabeat regrets the error.

Morra Aarons-Mele, founder of The Mission List.

Tereza Nemessanyi, founder of Honestly Now, an online Q&A forum, brought her elementary school-aged daughter along to a tech demo that she said was unlike most others she has been to.

“Last time I demoed was January 2011,” Ms. Nemessanyi said. “I brought my daughter with me and she asked me ‘mommy, why is it all boys?’”

Well that certainly wasn’t the case this time. Last night, more than 100 tech-savvy women (and a few guys) filled rows of chairs in a large room in the Microsoft building in midtown to participate in the first-ever New York Tech Meetup’s Women’s Demo Night.

The event, hosted by NY Tech Meetup and Change:The:Ratio, was set up to support the rising number of female founders of tech start-ups in New York. It featured demos by 11 companies including: ElectNext, Fathom, Findings, HonestlyNow, Hourly, Incline, The Mission List, Paperlex, ReadSocial, Loosecubes and VenueBook. The demos varied from an exclusive online travel site to a contract management site.

The theme of the night was the rising influence of women in the sphere of tech businesses, which was evident by the event’s following. The sold-out event consisted mostly of female professionals and a few male supporters.

But as Andrew Rasiej, board chair of NY Tech Meetup, told the audience, last night’s gender ratio is not typical in the world of tech businesses.

“Right now our industry is not diverse and it needs to be diverse,” Mr. Rasiej said.

The tech industry in the United States has notoriously been known for its small amount of gender diversity and even smaller amount of racial diveristy within the workplace.

Despite the industry’s lack of diversity, New York has recently been experiencing a rush of female influence in technology.

“In New York City, a tech startup is twice as likely to be started by a woman than it is in Silicon Valley or London,” Rachel Sterne, chief digital officer of the City of New York told the audience.

“There truly is a digital sisterhood- and it's not cheesy, it's real,” Morra Aarons-Mele, founder of The Mission List, an online marketing network for women told the Observer. “We get each other funded, introduced, and supported. I've found practical resources like insurance brokers and deep strategic advice from this community of women that talks online everyday, and then meets up all over the globe at events.”

Queens Tech Meetup Rooftop Reception

Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian stood at the front of a large room at the Hunters Point Plaza Penthouse in Long Island City, and looked out over the rows of tables set up for various startups based in the borough that, let’s be honest, doesn’t always have the best rep in the city.

“The New York tech community is just starting. There’s so much awesome stuff happening in all of New York City,” he said. “The only issue I’ve got is there’s a lot of it going on right around here.” He pointed to a map of Manhattan.

Speakers and guests alike welcomed the idea of Queens becoming a new hub for digital startup companies at last night’s inaugural Queens Tech Meetup. The crowded venue, which featured a rooftop deck looking out over an impressive view of the Manhattan skyline, attracted young professionals in the tech field who exchanged business cards constantly throughout the night.

Elias Roman, co-founder of Songza, a streaming music play list service, was equally enthused about the budding tech community in Queens. “After we got our first company funded, we moved the whole team to Long Island City and we could not be happier,” he said.

The Queens Tech Meetup is hosted by Coalition for Queens, a nonprofit focused on developing the local tech community. New York’s tech startups are concentrated heavily in Union Square and Flatiron, with Facebook and Twitter on the Upper West Side and a few hip hubs in Soho (Thrillist, Kickstarter), the West Village (Betaworks) and even Chinatown, where a few companies are clustered in a ratty building they call the “Silicon Sweatshop.” Brooklyn has got the startup bug, with hubs popping up in Dumbo and Williamsburg. Even Hoboken is making a name for itself with the New Jersey Tech Meetup, which now has almost 2,000 members.

Long Island City, primarily known for the Citi tower and, according to Wikipedia, it’s “rapid and ongoing gentrification,” is not generally thought of as a tech startup scene.

“This is a great location, I don’t know why this hasn’t become a more popular area,” said Michael Hillmeyer, an Ozone Park, Queens native and technology software developer. He came to the event because it seemed interesting and he has faith in the potential for Queens, and especially Long Island City, to build up in the next few years.

Marleen Vogelaar, COO of Shapeways, a 3-D printing company that is in the process of moving its production site to Long Island City, also presented, bringing along some 3D-printed jewelry pieces, a tiny espresso cup and an iPhone case.“When I came off the subway here from Manhattan for the first time, I just gravitated to Long Island City,” she said. “It’s a good fit for our company; it’s both an industrial and artistic community, it suits us.”

Brief Q&A sessions with each of the presenters followed the presentations. The remainder of the night consisted of demos by each of the companies that attended the meetup.

Jukay Hsu, founder of Coalition for Queens and the QTM event planner said he was happy with the event’s first turnout; he said he had to change the original venue of the event in order to fit more people. But he still hopes to see a bigger presence in the future.

“This is our first event and we had to expand our guest list multiple times,” he said. “That’s a really great indication of how big this can get and I hope this meetup continues to grow as we host more of them.”