By Jessica Roy 1:55pm

Brooklyn's Finest

(Photo: The Yard)

Williamsburg Coworking Space The Yard Takes on General Assembly, Plans a Continuing Ed Program

Back in February, Betabeat introduced you to The Yard, a freshly-opened coworking space in Williamsburg that we minted the “General Assembly of Brooklyn.” Turns out we’re psychic, because today The Yard announced that–just like its Manhattan competitor, GA–it will be offering continuing education courses in subjects like programming and biz dev, beginning this fall. All at “Brooklyn prices,” no less!

“We really want to cultivate a culture here that is cutting edge and innovative and collaborative,” Andy Smith, The Yard’s PR and curriculum coordinator, told Betabeat by phone. “It seems like now that we’re at a point where we are full, we can sort of branch out and extend our efforts to other aspects to cultivate that culture. Educational initiatives seemed like the next natural step.” Read More

By Jessica Roy 5/08/12 9:48am

Start-up School

(generalassemb.ly/)

General Assembly Opening New Campus in Berlin

General Assembly, the New York-based startup school for technology and design that announced its expansion to Boston just last week, is planning to open a second international campus, this time in the burgeoning tech belly of Berlin. G.A. is teaming up with Deutsche Telekom, a German telecommunications company, to create a co-working office and host classes, according to Business Insider. The campus will launch this summer.

Berlin has drummed up attention in recent months for its “punk rock” startup scene, and has birthed some pretty big-name startups, like audio-sharing service Soundcloud. So it makes sense that Berlin would be G.A.’s next target–though the city did rank pretty low on Startup Genome’s list of top 25 startup hubs. Perhaps G.A. can help Berlin claw its way past that #17 ranking.

By Kelly Faircloth 5/04/12 5:31pm

Shipping Up To Boston

generalassembly

General Assembly Expands to Boston

Looks like the scuttlebutt is fact and General Assembly is expanding to the frigid north. The Boston Globe reports that in June, the tech-campus-cum-coworking-space will launch classes based in the Cambridge Innovation Center, in Kendall Square. Conveniently, the area is also home to a massive talent pool in the form of MIT. We wonder if those Tetris kids are cooking up some kind of startup.

General Assembly hasn’t announced the classes to be offered, but cofounder Adam Pritzker told the Globe that the initial schedule will be arranged by a New York producer and that they’ll likely soon hire a local. In his comments to the paper, Mr. Pritzker was already evangelizing GA to the locals: Read More

By Gary Sharma 4/16/12 6:00am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie

Best Tech Events This Week (4sq Day, NY Tech Day, Fashion 2.0, food+tech, SkillShare Penny Conf, General Assembly Assembled Capital)

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 follow him at @garysguide and reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Want to hang out with former President Bill Clinton? Well of course you do! He will be in town this week to talk about his Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) at the Sustainable Operations Summit.

Funders & Founders are organizing an event called “Love, Sex, and Tech,” an 800-person dating startup show on Apr 19 in San Francisco. Now, whenever one encounters the words love, sex and tech in the same sentence in an event title the obvious next step is to go check them out, right?

Internet Week NY, that annual week-long geek fest celebrating NYC’s thriving internet industry & community, is coming up soon (May 14-21). So hurry up and go grab your Insider / HQ Pass and get ready to party!

Okay, and now let’s see what glorious tech events are happening in the Alley this week… Read More

By Ben Weitzenkorn 4/04/12 8:00am

the startup rundown

Mayor Michael Bloomberg with Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley. The mayor declared April 16 NYC's official 4sqday. (Ben Weitzenkorn)

Startup News: Foursquare Day, Impact Investing, Assembled Capital and New Social Apps

2×2^2. April 16 is officially 4sqDay in New York and over a dozen other cities around the country. The fan-created social media holiday’s official celebration will begin at 7 p.m. at The Caulfield. Check out the community blog and RSVP here.

CAPITAL IDEA. General Assembly is bringing back “Assembled Capital,” an all day event dedicated to getting startups funded. The $200 (plus a $4.97 fee) to get in is a bit steep, but breakfast, lunch and booze are totally included! The event will include talks, panels and plenty of elbow-rubbing time with the like of Squarespace’s Anthony Casalena, TechStars NYC’s David Tisch, Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Shane Snow of Contently and many others.

AIRbnFREE. Airbnb is teaming up with Thrillist and sponsoring Tour de Thrillist, a bicoastal race to discover all that LA, Vegas, Austin, Philly and of course NYC have to offer. Up for grabs is a five-destination trip and free Airbnb accommodations. Cross your fingers and enter the sweepstakes here. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 3/19/12 10:37am

The Education of NY Tech

(Joey deVilla /http://www.joeydevilla.com)

Ruby Instructor Open Sources Ruby Curriculum

Back in December, Art.sy’s Daniel Doubrovkine announced he would be teaching a six-week class geared toward developers, assisted by Pivotal Labs’s Dimitri Roche, on the popular, powerful and lightweight scripting language and framework known as Ruby on Rails. The price, $2,800 a student, was on solid middle ground in the range of Ruby class pricing, but some local Rubyists sneered at the high price tag for a language that many learn on their own.

The class, held at General Assembly, filled up immediately anyway. Now that it’s over, Mr. Doubrovkine took some time to reflect. Between lesson planning and grading, he estimated he worked on the class for 117 hours in total. He decided to use the experience to make a case for learning Ruby in the classroom and last week hosted one of the most well-attended NYC.rb meetups to date, called “Crafting a Ruby on Rails Course for Developers,” in which he outlined his methods for creating the curriculum. Read More

By Ben Weitzenkorn 2/22/12 6:00am

the startup rundownStartup

Betabeat: bringing you the finest in tech and startup news from these fine machines since before we were born. (BuzzFeed)

Startup News: Grokking Facebook Timeline for Fun and Profit

BLAST FROM THE PAST. Now, thanks to BuzzFeed, you can show all your friends how vintage chic your technology was—before it was cool. Prompted by the fairly recent Facebook timeline, BuzzFeed has introduced a Facebook app that lets users retroactively post images to their timeline. Checkout the “What Was Your First Computer?” question and reminisce about the nineteen eighties like it’s the 2020′s. The launch of this new app is probably just the beginning of a trend we’ll see as Facebook prepares to unveil its new timeline backdating ability.

CLICK CLICK FLASH. Pixable, the photo sharing complement for social networks is rolling out a couple big features. First, is a hashtag feature that allows users to tag their photos or their friends’ photos for an easier experience when recalling and organizing snapshots. #drunkenregrets?

At the same time Pixable is being integrated into the Facebook timeline technology. Users will be able to share their photo viewing and tagging activity in the Facebook ticker just like when listening to tunes on Spotify.

Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/21/12 5:24pm

Hack Hack Hack Hack It Apart

aviaryphotohackday2

For Its Upcoming Photo Hack Day Announces Big Prizes and Says Guten Tag to Berlin

This coming Saturday and Sunday, Aviary and General Assembly are hosting the second installment of their baller photo hackathon, often touted as “the world’s largest photo hack day,” though we’re not sure there’s that much competition. At last year’s event more than 175 developers produced 40+ hacks, a number of which were built using Face.com’s futuristic facial recognition technology.

More than  200 developers have already signed up for the second go-round, officially known as Photo Hack Day 2 (Twitter hashtag #PHD2), so you can expect even more hacked-together photo goodness. Like Aviary’s photo editing suite itself, the emphasis now is on mobile development rather than the web. “Sunday demo tickets completely sold out a full week and a half before the event, so we’re anticipating a good, curious crowd,” said Alex Taub, Aviary’s head of business development and partnerships.

Aviary and GA have already announced an impressive roster of speakers for a fireside chat moderated by Aviary CEO Avi Muchnick, including Tumblr’s David Karp, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, and Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh. But today they’re ready to talk about the good stuff: prize$$$. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 2/15/12 1:25pm

Going South for the Startup

(flickr.com/meddygarnet)

Canadian Government Sending Six Startups to General Assembly for Three Months

Six Canadian startups are headed to General Assembly this month, part of an initiative by the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service. The Canadian companies will spend three months inhaling the fumes of Silicon Alley from a pretty perch at General Assembly, thanks to a partnership between General Assembly and the Consulate General of Canada in New York. Read More