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.

The crisp Ms. Quinn. (Photo: courtesy of the Coalition for Queens)

It was merely mid-morning when Betabeat arrived at enterprise-focused accelerator Tipping Point Parters for a presser, and already everyone in attendance seemed to be wilting. The exception: City Council Speaker (and, let us not forget, mayoral candidate) Christine Quinn, who looked downright jovial. Perhaps she was just that excited about her coming announcement.

Or perhaps she was simply thrilled to be wearing what looked like seersucker, while the rest of us suffered in the heat.

We were gathered into a rather claustrophobic--but very well air-conditioned--startup space, complete with white lighting fixtures and random whiteboard. The occasion: The creation of two new programs meant to feed engineers and other much-needed tech talent into the city's startup sector.

The first, which bears the decidedly unsexy name of "the Advanced Software Development Program," will offer select computer science students at CUNY instruction and lectures by "industry professionals." The curriculum was developed in conjunction with companies like Tipping Point, to align as closely as possible with industry needs.

Ms. Quinn also admitted that, excited as the city is about the Cornell-Technion and NYU Polytechnic campuses, there will be some people for whom it's "out of financial reach." "We want to make sure those folks have exactly, if not a better chance, at being leaders in the tech community as anybody else."

Since we are all contributing taxpayer dollars and everything.

The second program involves the Coalition for Queens, the borough's very own NYTM-style boosters and organizer of the brand new Queens Tech Meetup.) The nonprofit is partnering with CUNY and Skillshare to launch its own series of practical tech classes, and money from the city will help them get off the ground. Some will be held in the coalition's Long Island City headquarters, and the team is working on sourcing other locations. Instructors will include advisor (and New York Tech Meetup cofounder) Dawn Barber, as well as experts from firms like Ogilvy & Mather, Covington & Burling, OKFocus and Barrel NY. Classes will start this fall.

"With these two new programs, we're addressing the skills gap in the tech sector in two different ways," said Ms. Quinn, calling them "important steps to ensure the city's tech sector continues to grow and will help more new yorkers get back to work in well-paying, cutting-edge jobs."

The cost to the city: $101,000 for the CUNY program, and $65,000 for the Coalition for Queens classes. Ms. Quinn pointed out that this, in the grand scheme of things, is not that much money. It's certainly far cheaper than a $2 billion applied sciences campus. But it sounds like there's a limited number of students that the CUNY program, at least, will impact: She put the number at 20 for the program's first year (and added that they've already received 70 applications).

She was followed by Art Chang, CEO of Tipping Point Partners. After a genuinely heartwarming ode to software engineering as stepping stone to the American dream, Mr. Chang hopped on what sounded like a personal hobby horse: "What everyone should also be focused on is the impending crisis in the $300 billion enterprise software market, whose crumbling legacy systems power our  economy, our society, and our government," adding that, "The transformation of these systems should be a national priority" and it's impossible without more software engineers.

Did we mention that Tipping Point Partners focuses on enterprise software?

Next up: Adam Milligan, who is helping to build up the New York office of San Francisco-based Pivotal Labs. "Oh, dump that San Francisco," Ms. Quinn interjected with a facial expression that just screamed, "Ugh."

He meandered through the need for people skills on software development teams, before finishing strong with a (somewhat) rousing appeal to local pride: As soon as he arrived in New York to help launch Pivotal's office here, "I almost immediately started hearing conversations about programs like this, about mentorship, about technical educations--conversations that I didn't really hear in San Francisco." Cue loud, satisfied laugher from Ms. Quinn.

He added: "I believe that programs like this are the most important thing that the technology industry will do in the next decade, if not longer."

Not to be outdone by the Manhattanites, Coalition for Queens founder Jukay Hsu stepped up to point out that Queens has no fewer than 2.5 million residents. "There's incredible potential in the borough to help expand the talent pool here and to help contribute to New York City's growing tech community," he said.

Maybe what Queens needs to get some attention is start a borough beef?