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! ;)

Yep, Jobs is right up there with Zombie Lindsay Lohan. You'll probably run into him at a party tonight. Some call it a tribute; some are lookalikes simply embracing an obvious comparison. Others waited until the last minute and happened to have jeans, a black turtleneck and an Apple product lying around. Check out the Jobs costume extravaganza.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (a.k.a. "The Guy with the Red Tie"), founder of GarysGuide, mentor at ER Accelerator 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.

Spoiler Alert!
Walter Isaacson's long-awaited bio about Steve Jobs comes out today. But if I know u folks well, y'all just want a quick 'n dirty review to be able to hold ur own in any water cooler conversation this week, no? So here goes ... (deep breath) ... "Jobs wanted to wage thermonuclear war on Android, was obsessed with Autobiography Of A Yogi (read it every year, only book on his iPad), almost licensed Mac OS to Compaq (but had second thoughts about giving away the 'crown jewels'), was deeply influenced by Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma, wanted to revolutionize the textbook industry next, thought he had finally cracked what an Apple television would be like, was 50-50 on whether God exists and hated on-off power switches." Phewwww. There u have it. You're welcome.

The 'Gary' Halloween Costume
So yeah, Halloween is right around the corner and u know what means ... a whole buncha tech+Halloween flavored shindigs all over town. Now I know u folks are busy figuring out ur perfect outfit--maybe dressing up as ur favorite startup founder or VC or as a Tech Bubble or a Signed Termsheet or ur favorite Social Networking App or a Fail Whale or an Angry Bird or a Siri-enabled iPhone or whatever. But here's the dealio ... I better not catch u dressed up in a black suit, white shirt & red tie with a giant 'fro and 70s style mutton chop sideburns, 'k? Oh, who am I kidding? No one is pimping for the 'Gary' Halloween costume to take off this year more than me! ;)

Deals & Discounts
As always, a bunch of tasty deals and discounts for my peeps including classes at GA, the Raise Cache fashion extravaganza, Silicon Valley Human Rights conf, Dave McClure's Warm Gun conf and more.

And now, lets journey into the heart of the Silicon Alley beast to see whats creakin' this week...

The Startup Lifecycle: Your Company, from Idea to Maturity
Taught by Fred Destin, a VC in NYC.
Monday, 8 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

The World Technology Summit & Awards 2011
The event where u get to hang out with cool folks doing innovative work. Speakers include Ray Kurzweil (Singularity Summit), Kati London (Zynga), Steven Howe (Center for Space Nuclear Research), Poppy Harlow (CNN Money), Jeff Kluger (Time) and more.
Tuesday, 7 a.m. @ Time & Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas

GA Digital Buffet: Data and APIs
If you live, breathe and dream in the wonderful world of APIs then you're guaranteed to like this one. With Doug Rushkoff, Matthew LeMay, Chris Castiglione, Rob Spectre and Akshay Patil. Yeah, that Doug Rushkoff.
Tuesday, 9:30 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

ERA Halloween Party at Webster Hall!
So you mean we can network with other cool startup entrepreneurs AND meet potential investors AND get to dress up in our fave Halloween costumes? Now thats just crazzzy talk.
Wednesday, 6 p.m. @ Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street

Digital Media MBA October Happy Hour
Learn about a bunch of cool projects people are working on, including improving efficiency of taxi dispatch systems at NYC airports, creating a film & new media incubator, helping muni agencies better leverage social media, growing the reach of NYC Life (Channel 25) and much more.
Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. @ Solas, 232 East 9th Street

Location-Based Apps Demo Day Meetup
Location-based apps are hot. Demo days are hot. Here's what u get when u bring all that hotness in one place. Presenting will be Yog, Getgame, Matchbook, Jauntlet, Citymaps and others.
Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. @ Aol Ventures, 770 Broadway

PGA New Media Council: Smart TV - Producing For Pixels
If u are the type who starts hyperentilating everytime someone blogs, tweets or whispers about the fictional (so far) but oh-so-desirable Apple Television, then u have bigger problems this event may be right up ur alley. In the hot seat talking about Smart TVs will be Rachelle Zoffer (Interactive TV at Verizon), Felicia Wong (Showtime), Eva Bask-Karlsson (Samsung Electronics), Vamsi Sistla (Telvetto) and Anne-Marie Roussel (Sharp Labs). Moderated by Chris Pfaff.
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ Theresa Lang Auditorium The New School, 55 West 13th Street

Be One of the Cool Kids: An Introduction to Ruby on Rails
Wait, whaa...? I thought the cool kids preferred to code in Fortran, no?
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ Skillshare HQ, 407 Broome Street

BKTK - Tech, Design, Social Media and more in Brooklyn
Wherein you learn how to deal with situations where "your collaborator has turned into a dictator."
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ Bitmap Creative Labs, 300 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn

Spotify NYC Developer Meetup
Spotify fanboy? Then, u my friend, cannot miss this event. Hang out with Spotify's community manager Andrew Mager who'll demo their platform, engineer Ricardo Santos who'll show off their backend and recruiter Howard Smith who'll tell u how to get a job there. And yep, there'll be free food and booze. But what I really wanna know is how to prevent my guilty pleasure songs & playlists from accidentally popping up in my facebook newsfeed. About time we got that fixed.
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ Spotify NYC, 76 9th Avenue, 11th Floor

TEDxSiliconAlley
Chris Grayson had a dream. To bring a lil' bit of the magic of TED to our backyard one day. And so he has. Introducing the inaugural edition of TEDxSiliconAlley with an all-star speaker lineup including Scott Heiferman (Meetup), Max Haot (Livestream), Alexandra W. Wilson (Gilt Groupe), Avi Muchnick (Aviary), Siobhan Quinn (Foursquare), Elena Silenok (Clothia), Anna Akbari (NYU), Jack Mason (IBM), Tor Myhren (Grey), Alexander Rea (Skinny), Nicole Tricoukes (Motorola), Faris Yakob (MDC Partners), Rana Sobhany (iPad DJ) and more. [It's sold out, despite being $100. --ed.]
Thursday, 1:30 p.m. @ Grey Advertising, 200 Fifth Avenue

New York Mobile App Developer (MAD) Meetup
Its a mad, mad, mad world ... of apps.
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. @ Magnani Caruso Dutton, 138 West 25th Street

Ignite: Lean Startup at Pivotal Labs
Since y'all have been such nice folks, Ignite organizer Tikva Morowati has decided that this month we're getting a 2nd (BONUS!) Ignite event in partnership with the Lean Startup folks. How do u like 'em apples! :) Presenting will be Alex Weinberg (SnappSchool), Brandon Root (Friendzy), Brian Sowards (GiftSquid), Deirdre Lord (Megawatt Hour), Giff Constable (Lean Startup Meetup), Jacob Brody (MESA), Josh Seiden (LUXr NYC), Kareem Kouddous (CrowdTap), Katia Beauchamp (Birchbox), Lee Hoffman (Veri), Michele Tepper (EnergyHub), Noah Kagan (AppSumo), Rachael Chong (Catchafire) and more.
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. @ Pivotal Labs, 841 Broadway

Digital DUMBO: The Haberdashery Sponsored by Bing
Yes, yes, Digital Dumbo is awesome. But u know whats even more awesome? When they invite The Bumbys (That would be Gill and Jill Bumby. No, those are not their real names) to give u a "fair and honest appraisal of your appearance." Intrigued? I know I am.
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. @ Dumbo Loft, 155 Water Street

App Store Revenue Optimization
Want to take down Angry Birds and make a bajillion dollars in the process? Well of course u do! So go get the inside scoop from Andrew Cohen of Brainscape and get crackin' on that killer app of urs.
Thursday, 8 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

Techdrinkup Tech Takeover of Halloween (School Girls & Nerds) Costume Party
More tech + halloween craziness. Got a hawt costume to show off? You might just snag urself a free bottle of Patron XO or Ultimate Vodka. Sounds like a boozy party, all right.
Friday, 9 p.m. @ G 50 Lounge, 208 East 50th Street

More on the horizon...
Social Media World Forum North America on Nov 1 @ Javits Center
November NY Tech Meetup on Nov 2 @ 92 Street NY
GA + GLabs present: Ben Lerer, Co-Founder & CEO of Thrillist on Nov 2 @ General Assembly
Mashable Media Summit on Nov 4 @ The Times Center
CNet Gotham Live on Nov 9 @ Openhouse Gallery
Raise Cache: A Celebration of NY Tech and A Benefit for hackNY on Nov 17 @ State Armory

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends!