Not invited to TEDxTimesSquare. (Photo: Instagram, Yuka Inage)

At this point, everywhere short of the Herald Square subway station has its very own TEDx conference. Hence today's inaugural edition of TEDxTimesSquare, focused on the theme: “Openness: Exploring the Limits and Possibilities of Open Culture.” Speakers include HARO founder Peter Shankman, who's delivering a talk about the virtues of niceness and "YouTube Sensation" Collin McLoughlin.

Frankly, this is a missed opportunity. Why not round up a bunch of off-brand Elmos and Super Marios and Cookie Monsters to talk about crisis PR?

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder & CEO 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 follow him at @garysguide and reach him via email at gary [at] garysguide.com.

An absolutely crazy, crazzzzzzy week in tech coming up with a ton of really good events including hacker townhalls, demo days, Startup Weekends, TEDx-es, hack days, incubator openings, happy hours, roundtables and more. Lets take a look, shall we? ...

January Hacker Townhall
Pizza, beer and hanging out with other fellow hackers, technologists, tinkerers, and thinkers? Life just doesn't get better than that, my friend! :)
Monday, 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC Presents: Business Plan Presentations: Innovations in Digital Commerce
Panel Speakers include Albert Wenger (Partner, Union Square Ventures), David Teten (Partner, ff Venture Capital), Eric Nordlander (Engineering Partner, Google Ventures) and Sim Blaustein (Principal, BDMI). Companies presenting include Agnik (data analytics for distributed, mobile & embedded), Echoer (Finalist at Le Web), Moviecom.tv (Red Herring Global 2011 Winner), Megawatt Hour (decision-making platform for energy purchasing) and WishMash (The social wishlist platform).
Tuesday, 5:30 p.m. @ Chadbourne & Parke LLP, 30 Rockefeller Plaza

BMW i Ventures Incubator opening
With Mitchell Moss (Director, Rudin Center for Transportation Policy), Kurt Buecheler (VP BizDev, Streetline), Bill Schwebel (Senior VP, Inrix), John Schmid (Chairman, Green Parking Council), Anthony Eskinazi (CEO & Founder, ParkatmyHouse), Ulrich Quay (MD, BMW i Ventures) and Alexander Diehl (MD, BMW i Ventures).
Tuesday, 6 p.m. @ BMV i Ventures, 95 Morton St 7th Floor

Making Startups Work - Optimizing the Front End
With Damian Galarza (Thrillist), Pau Santesmasses (Tumblr), Mike Singleton (Foursquare), Ahmed Hashim (Etsy) and Benjamin Wilson (Refinery29).
Tuesday, 7 p.m. @ Refinery29, 30 Cooper Square 4th Floor

500 Startups Demo Day NYC
Back by popular demand! Go check out Startup Pirate (Aarrr!!!), Wearer of 500 Hats and Super Angel Extra-ordinaire Dave McClure and his 500 Startups Accelerator's 3rd batch (Fall 2011) of startups.
Wednesday, 10 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

Xconomy Forum: New York’s Venture Emergence
Rockstar speaker list including Fred Wilson (Founder & Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures), Todd Dagres (Founder & General Partner, Spark Capital), Barry Silbert (Founder & CEO, SecondMarket), Nick Beim (General Partner, Matrix Partners), Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and Alexis Maybank (CoFounders, Gilt Groupe), Rich Levandov (Managing Director, Avalon Ventures), Dave Morgan (Founder & CEO, Simulmedia), Peter Stern (CEO, bitly), Eric Wiesen, General Partner (RRE Ventures) and more.
Wednesday, 2 p.m. @ Apella Event Space at Alexandria Center, 450 East 29th Street 2nd Floor

The Business Side of Dating
Dating can be fun (or not). But there is no doubt that there is a lot of ka-ching! to be made in the business of dating. Featuring the-guy-who-started-it-all Gary Kremen (Founder, Match.com), Brian Schechter (HowAboutWe), Adam Sachs (Ignighter) and Dana Kanze (Moonit).
Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. @ Goodwin Procter, 620 Eighth Avenue Floor 26

BD Meetup Happy Hour
Boozin' and schmoozin' with the biz dev crowd!
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St

Expanding Your Business into Europe for Early Stage High Growth Companies (NY)
With Matt Meeker (Partner, Polaris Ventures), Terry Jost (CEO, Mycroft), Peter Melerud (CoFounder & COO, Kemp Technologies), Adrian Crawford (Partner, KPMG) and Mark Gallagher (SVP, Silicon Valley Bank).
Thursday, 6 p.m. @ Dogpatch Labs, 36 E 12th St

Meet DreamIt Alumni in NY
Interested in applying to DreamIt accelerator? Then go hang out with DreamIt alumni including Adapt.ly, ClothesHorse, Easel Learning, LearnBop, LetsGiftIt, Parse.ly, Postling and SeatGeek
Thursday, 6 p.m. @ Solas, 232 E 9th Street

Startup Roundtable Series 7 - Mobile
Panelists include Nihal Mehta (CEO, LocalResponse & Partner, ENIAC Ventures), Veronika Sonsev (CEO, inSparq.com & Founder, Women in Wireless) and Brett Martin (CEO, Sonar.me).
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. @ Select Office, 116 West 23rd Street

18th Annual Columbia Business School Private Equity & Venture Capital Conference
Throwing a little bit o' private equity into our usual mix of Startup and VC related events. Keynoting are Tim Draper (Founder, Draper Fisher Jurvetson), Bob Nardelli (CEO, Cerberus) and David Rubenstein (CoFounder & Managing Director, The Carlyle Group).
Friday, 12 a.m. @ Columbia Business School, Alfred Lerner Hall

NYC EDU Startup Weekend
StartupWeekend is back for another red-bull and pizza fueled all night coding and hacking and startupping weekend. This time the focus is on education. Oh yeah.
Friday, 6 p.m. @ The Mandell School, 795 Columbus Ave

API Hackday NYC
Time to get ur hack on, yo!
Saturday, 8 a.m. @ Mashery, 597 Broadway 2nd Floor

TEDxBigApple presents Disruptive Ideas
Its gonna be all about disruptive ideas with near-term impact in housing, biotech, local spaces, biomimicry, fashion, business and much more. Looks like its gonna be off the hook. :)
Saturday, 2 p.m. @ Saatchi & Saatchi, 375 Hudson

More on the horizon…
February 2012 NY Tech Meetup on Feb 08 @ NYU Skirball Center For The Performing Arts
#Techdrinkup (Open Bar) Huge Pre-Party for Social Media Week on Feb 09 @ The Parlour
2012 NYC Pipeline Fellowship Conference on Feb 10 @ Goodwin Procter
SecondMarket Presents: Capitalyze on Feb 15 @ Dream Downtown
NY Beta :: Media & Entertainment Edition on Feb 16 @ GreenSpaces
NYC Gaming February Meetup on Feb 23 @ General Assembly
Lean Startup Machine NYC on Feb 24 @ GrindSpace
Photo Hack Day 2 on Feb 25 @ General Assembly

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends!

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!

via HudsononHouston

Well, would you look at that. Guess we're all growns up because Silicon Alley just got it very own TEDx conference: TEDxSiliconAlley. Mark Thursday, October 27th on your calendar, because GREY Advertising will be open up its Fifth Avenue space to a host of speakers from the city's booming tech scene.

The theme of the day will be: "The creative use of technology — beyond its originally intended application —with unexpected or unintended outcomes that are either good, or bad, or possibly unknown."

A number of familiar names to anyone in the startup world are scheduled to speak, such as Gilt Groupe co-founder Alexandra Wilson, LiveStream co-founder Max Haot, Meetup co-founder Scott Heiferman, Aviary founder Avi Muchnick, Foursquare product manager Siobhan Quinn, Bondsy co-founder Gavin Becker and more.

TEDx programs, like the one in Silicon Valley or even Ted x NY, are independently-organized local salons, but sanctioned by the mothership to "share a TED-like experience." TEDxSilicon Alley will use live speakers, TEDTalks video to spark discussion and connection in a smaller group.

Why did Silicon Alley's techies deserve one of their own? We'll let the organizer, Chris Grayson, director of digital for Humble.Tv explain:

"New York City possesses characteristics that make it's tech community unique, and differentiated from other tech centers like California's Bay Area, Austin or Boulder. It is an international center for finance, providing local availability of capital. It is home to many vibrant creative industries including a global center for fashion. It is the world leader of the media industry, including broadcast, periodicals, book publishing, music and advertising. Given that New York is the United States' only real "walking city", it has become a natural hotbed of activity in geo-location based mobile development — It is not an accident that companies like Foursquare, Sonar and others would flourish in New York. As mobile continues its near vertical trajectory as the fastest growing media channel, New York City is uniquely positioned to capture a tremendous amount of that growth."

You can buy tickets to the event here. Better hurry, according to the Eventbrite listing, there are only 81 left.