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.

Winter is coming.

No, I'm not talking about the weather (though it has been getting chilly lately). Nor Game of Thrones (FYI, season 3 begins on March 31 for those keeping track!). I'm talking about the growing perception in Startupland that the good times might really be coming to an end (for now). Following last week's post by Fred Wilson was this one by PandoDaily's Sarah Lacy, talking about the Series A crunch and how as many as thousand companies who've received seed rounds won't be around in six months. Then there's this one by TechCrunch's Alexia Tsotsis, arguing that the Series A crunch actually extended to Series B, C and D. So what should entrepreneurs make of all this? Do what ya should be doing anyway--focus on building an insanely great product that customers really want and start thinking about monetization early. Personally, I think this is the best time to build a company.

My buddy Steve Rosenbaum (founder/CEO of Magnify) is NYCEDC’s Entrepreneur at Large, and he'll be doing virtual office hours (via Google Hangout) to answer all your startup and entrepreneurship questions. Register here.

I have a couple of free tickets to the upcoming Mobile Loco conference in San Francisco on December 11. Speakers include Andrew Mason (Groupon), Bill Gurley (Benchmark Capital), Don Dodge (Google) and others. If interested, just shoot me an email at gary@garysguide.com with your Name, Title and Company. We'll pick two randomly selected winners.

The annual Amazon AWS Startup Challenge deadline is at midnight this Wed (December 5). This year there'll be four grand prizes (gaming, big data, consumer apps & business apps). Each prize includes $50,000 in cash + $50,000 in AWS credits. Nice!

And the deadline for nominating a startup for the Crunchies (co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat) is this Thursday (December 6).

In case ya missed TechDrinkup last week, a casting team from Bravo's Start-ups did show, looking for NYC-edition characters. Here's Betabeat's writeup, with all the juicy details.

Going slightly off-topic ... I'm in fairly good shape but I've been feeling the urge lately to find a kickass fitness regimen and get in reaaalllly great shape. But with a ton of holiday parties coming up, I'm wondering if I should start now or wait until after the holidays? Hmmmm ... If anyone has any interesting fitness or diet routines to recommend, feel free to email me.

And now let's see whats going down in the Alley this week...

TEDxSiliconAlley 2012
The theme is Rise of the Machines and the keynote speaker is Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near). Also includes Bre Pettis (founder, Makerbot), Francessca Ferrando (philosopher of posthumanism & visiting scholar at Columbia), Jincey Lumpkin (attorney & Huffington Post sex columnist) and Ken Segall (creative director of Apple's "Think Different" campaign).
Monday (Dec. 3), 9:30 a.m. @ Terminal 5, 610 W. 56th Street

Lean Startup Conference Livestream
Keynotes by Marc Andreessen, Steve Blank, Beth Comstock and Eric Ries.
Monday (Dec. 3), 12 p.m. @ WeWorkLabs, 175 Varick Street, 4th Fl.

Windows Apps Labs Launch at WeWork Labs
Access to the newest Windows 8 devices (including Microsoft Surface). Also Bing Fund, the new angel fund and incubation program backed by Microsoft, will be dropping in to talk about the program.
Monday (Dec. 3), 6 p.m. @ WeWork Labs, 175 Varick Street

NY Mobile First: App Pitch Showdown
With Nihal Mehta (ENIAC Ventures), Sim Blaustein (Bertelsmann Venture Capital), Charlie O'Donnell (Brooklyn Bridge Ventures), Chieh Huang (Zynga NY) and Heather Hromoho (Millennial Media).
Monday (Dec. 3), 7 p.m. @ Alley NYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th Fl.

Think Commerce Summit
Rockstar speaker list including Jon Miller (former CEO, Digital Media Group, News Corp), Bob Pittman (chairman & CEO, Clear Channel), Ben Lerer (CEO, Thrillist), Eric Hippeau (partner, Lerer Ventures), Shana Fisher (Highline Venture Partners), Ezra Kucharz (president, Local Digital Media, CBS), Nick Lehman (president of digital, NBC Universal) and others.
Tuesday (Dec. 4), 12 a.m. @ Chelsea Piers - Pier 60, 23rd Street and 11th Avenue

Xconomy Forum: Mobile Madness New York
With Rich Miner (Google Ventures), Roger Ehrenberg (IA Ventures), Peter Flint (Polaris Venture Partners), Joe Essenfeld (Jibe), Eric Koester (Zaarly), Robby Stein (Yahoo), Jalak Jobanputra (FuturePerfect Ventures), Rahul Sood (Bing Fund) and others.
Tuesday (Dec. 4), 2 p.m. @ NYC Microsoft Office, 1290 6th Avenue

December 2012 NY Tech Meetup
You know the drill. Five-minute, rapid-fire demos. A bunch of amazing new startups. Now hopefully you've managed to snag one of those elusive tickets.
Tuesday (Dec. 4), 7 p.m. @ NYU Skirball Center For The Performing Arts, 566 Laguardia Place

TechHub NY - A Very Merry TechHub
Networking, hosted drinks and bites, DJs, photo-booth action, and more.
Wednesday (Dec. 5), 6:30 p.m. @ Ace Hotel, 20 W. 29th Street

Pitchcrawl 2.0 - Angel Investor / Entrepreneur Mixer
Investors include Marissa Campise (Venrock), Lucas Nelson (DFJ Gotham), Rahul Gandhi (High Peaks Venture Partners), Mark Wachen (DreamIt Ventures), Peter Flint (Polaris Venture Partners), Charlie Kemper (Revel Partners & ERA), William Peng (Raptor) and others.
Wednesday (Dec. 5), 7 p.m. @ To be decided

Columbia Engineering Entrepreneurship Night
Arguably among the most influential technology entrepreneurs over the last decade, Bill Campbell and Ben Horowitz will discuss the new NYC tech boom, how it is driving the East Coast startup ecosystem, and how NYC entrepreneurship is giving Silicon Valley a run for its money.
Thursday (Dec. 6), 6 p.m. @ Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W. 18th Street

Water Collective Holiday Party
An evening of open bar, hors d'oeuvres, silent auction, and raffle to celebrate a new year of clean water and economic empowerment.
Thursday (Dec. 6), 7 p.m. @ Top Of The Garden, 251 W. 30th Street, 16th Fl.

Celebrate the Arts with AlleyNYC (Holiday Party!)
Just pure partying and having fun with awesome people.
Thursday (Dec. 6), 8 p.m. @ AlleyNYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th Fl.

Investor series with Erik Norlander of Google Ventures
Google is one of the largest companies and a frequent dream strategic partner, investor, acquirer. Hear from the inside how it works as well as the acquisition process.
Friday (Dec. 7), 4 p.m. @ The Lab, 122 W. 26th Street, 5th Fl.

Hack // Meat
Bringing together technologists, entrepreneurs, creatives, policy experts, non-profit leaders and industry executives to develop technologies and tools that help democratize meat.
Friday (Dec. 7), 6 p.m. @ Grind, 419 Park Avenue South, 2nd Fl.

TimesOpen Hack Day
A day filled with learning, coding, tinkering, having fun and hanging out with some of the best developers in NYC.
Saturday (Dec. 8), 10 a.m. @ The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, 15th Fl.

More events on the horizon...
Women in Wireless Holiday Party on Dec. 10 @ SoHo House
Charity Ball 2012 on Dec. 10 @ 69th Regiment Armory
FashInvest 2012 Capital Conference on Dec. 11 @ Fashion Institute of Technology
10 Startup Mistakes to Avoid on Dec. 11 @ Orrick at The CBS Building
Damsels in Design 2012 Holiday Soiree on Dec. 11 @ Museum of the City of New York
Perfecting Your Business Development Strategies on Dec. 12 @ Anchin
Ultra Light Startups: Investor Feedback Forum on Dec. 13 @ Microsoft
StartupBus: Accelerate NYC 2012 on Dec. 15 @ The Alley
December NY Enterprise Technology Meetup on Dec. 18 @ Cooley
Windows 8 Launch Celebration! on Dec. 18 @ Microsoft

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

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.

Hola folks,

Batten down the hatches. Stock up on the liquor (and food). Bring out the candles and flashlights. Because Hurricane Sandy (a.k.a. #frankenstorm) is almost upon us. And now, at almost a thousand miles wide, it definitely has our attention. Hopefully by this time y'all are safely at home (and not still slumming in Zone A) with eyes glued to the twenty-four-hour news coverage, watching weathermen expound on "cones" and "surges."

As you know, the MTA has shut down all subway and buses, and pretty much every event on Monday has been cancelled or postponed including AllThingsD's Dive Into Mobile conference, Google's Android event, Facebook's engineering open house and our own Big Apple Smackdown Silicon Alley ping-pong tournament (which will be re-scheduled).

At this time, the Tuesday events (and the rest of the week) seem uncertain too. They're still listed below, but I'd highly recommend you confirm first with the event organizers. In the mean time, stay safe, keep your fingers crossed that the storm turns out to be a mild one and don't forget to check Miguel Bloombito's Twitter feed for the latest updates!

Lots of really awesome events coming up in the next few weeks ...

November 8 is the city's preeminent startup event, Ingenuity, organized by the New York Venture Capital Association (NYVCA). Who's coming? Tim Armstrong (CEO, Aol), Julius Genachowski (chairman, FCC), Mike Richter (New York Rangers), Bob Pittman (CEO, Clear Channel), Michael Barrett (Chief Revenue Officer, Yahoo) and many more.

Also on November 8 is Red Innova, an intimate event to create a better understanding of Latin American Internet market opportunities and trends. Featured speakers include Martín Varsavsky (FON), Fabrice Grinda (OLX), Andrew Mclaughlin (Betaworks) and Matías Recchia (Vostu).

On November 9 is Capital On Stage, an unconventional conference about funding where, in a twist, top-tier investors will present themselves to the world’s finest Internet startups. David Aronoff (Flybridge), David Teten (ff Ventures), Tom Wisniewski (NY Angels), Brad Svrluga (High Peaks), Lucas Nelson (DFJ Gotham), Jahan Ali (NYC Investment Fund) and others.

My friend Shaherose Charania (Founder of Women 2.0) is organizing the highly anticipated Women 2.0 Pitch conference on November 14. Keynote speakers include female founders of Match.com, Cisco, Oxygen Network, Urban Decay and talks and panels feature women entrepreneurs who've run super successful Kickstarter projects and grown massively successful companies from the ground up. Don't miss it!

The good folks at the upcoming Angelhack hackathon (on November 17) are offering a few free tickets to GarysGuide members. Just use the discount code GG.

When the theme of an event is 'Rise of the Machines' and the keynote speaker is author Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near and the recent How To Create A Mind), all I can say is--sign me up! That would be the upcoming TEDxSiliconAlley event on December 3. Other keynoters will be Bre Pettis (founder, Makerbot), Francessca Ferrando (Philosopher of Posthumanism and visiting scholar at Columbia), Jincey Lumpkin (Attorney and Huffington Post sex columnist) and Ken Segall (creative director of Apple's "Think Different" campaign).

And if you're a startup, don't forgt to 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 your startup promotion video and you just might win the opportunity to make a live pitch to the ARC Angel Round Capital Fund.

And now let's see what might be going down in the Alley this week...

The {c}0dEd Costume Carousal!
A Halloween celebration of the New York coworking startup community.
Wednesday (Oct. 31), 7 p.m. @ Alley NYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th Fl.

NYC UNCUBED (Startup and Scale)
Bringing together emerging companies and talented attendees in an exciting and informative environment that showcases startup culture.
Thursday (Nov. 1), 1 p.m. @ The Altman Building, 135 W 18th Street

Food Network and Ad Age Present: Brand Hacks
Six startups will be selected to pitch partnerships, new tech and integration ideas to a panel of top Food Network execs and industry pros. The best idea receives $25,000.
Thursday (Nov 1), 6 p.m. @ Food Network Studios, Chelsea Market, 75 9th Avenue

Behind the scenes at Gawker: Publishers, Brands and Native Ads
Get the scoop on Gawker's native ad process, strategies around scaling, building effective, measurable products and more.
Thursday (Nov 1), 6 p.m. @ NewsCred, 27 West 24th Street, Ste 202

Start-Up City: If You Can Make it Here Part 2
With Josh Miller (founder, Branch), Ben McKean (cofounder & CEO, Savored), Vinicius Vacanti (cofounder & CEO, Yipit), Kathryn Minshew (CEO & cofounder, The Daily Muse), Kellee Khalil (founder, Lover.ly) and moderated by Rachel Sklar (Change the Ratio).
Thursday (Nov 1), 6:30 p.m. @ NYIT Auditorium, 1871 Broadway

State of the Startup: Politics
With Mattan Griffel, Harrison Weber, Alexis Ohanian, and Reshma Saujani.
Thursday (Nov 1), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Mashable Media Summit 2012
With David Carey (President, Hearst Magazines), Alexis Ohanian (cofounder, Reddit), Kay Matadi (head of entertainment & media, Facebook), Jason Seikin (SVP, PBS Interactive), Bonita Stewart (VP Partner Business Solutions, Google), Raman Kia (Executive Director Digital Strategy, Condé Nast) and others.
Friday (Nov 2), 9 a.m. @ The TimesCenter, 242 West 41st Street

2012 NYU Entrepreneurs Festival
Rockstar speaker list including Jack Dorsey (cofounder Twitter and Square), Herb Kelleher (cofounder & former CEO, Southwest Airlines), Alexandre Douzet (cofounder & COO, TheLadders) and Rachel Sterne Haot (Chief Digital Officer NYC).
Friday (Nov 2), 12:30 p.m. @ Tisch Hall, 40 W 4th Street

NYC Startup Weekend FinTech Edition
Bringing together financial technologists with the goal of building consumer and enterprise financial applications with tools provided by several API and data partners.
Friday (Nov 2), 6 p.m. @ The Alley NYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th Fl.

Foursquare Hackathon
Build something amazing and you might just find yourself ringing the NASDAQ closing bell, rocking tickets to SXSW, partying with an action figure version of yourself, or wearing the infamous Foursquare hackathon TITLE BELT.
Saturday (Nov 3), 9 a.m. @ Foursquare HQ, 568 Broadway

November DemoDays
Part of the NYU Entrepreneur Week. Students take the stage to showcase what they've been working on.
Saturday (Nov 3), 5:30 p.m. @ Pivotal Labs, 841 Broadway, 8th Fl.

More events on the horizon...
Founders@Fail: Pitching Publishers on Nov 5 @ General Assembly
Ad:Tech New York on Nov 7 @ Javits Convention Center
Daniweb Presents: Publishers meet Advertisers Cocktail Mixer on Nov 7 @ Highland Park
Ingenuity 2012 on Nov 8 @ New World Stages
NYTECH Fall Networking Cocktail Reception on Nov 8 @ National Showroom
Capital On Stage on Nov 9 @ Goodwin Procter at NY Times
Hack & Jill: Hacksgiving on Nov 9 @ Etsy
Funding The Best In Global Innovation on Nov 13 @ SNR Denton
Women 2.0 PITCH NYC 2012 Conference & Competition on Nov 14 @ Manhattan Center
AngelHack Fall 2012 New York City on Nov 17 @ The AlleyNYC

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

Jon Carin rocks (Photo: wikipedia.org)

Brain Boost This morning, Braintree, a Chicago-based online payments company announced, a $35 million series B round of funding. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). By investing in Braintree, new investors join Accel Partners and others and the company’s total funding is now set at $70 million.

Braintree acquired the beloved bill splitting app, Venmo, back in August and has kept it independent so far. Braintree allows businesses to accept payments from costumers, but Venmo allows consumers to make payments to anyone. It's a natural fit for both parties.

Braintree's client list includes fast-growing startups like Uber, Fab.com, Airbnb, who use it, "through periods of rapid growth without disruption to their ability to accept payments," the company said in an email to Betabeat. They also name-checked competitors like Stripe and PayPal, noting that one "big difference is that merchants receive their funds typically in two days with Braintree, vs. seven days with Stripe."

Be A Fellow The New York City Economic Development Corporation is now accepting nominations for its third class of “NYC Venture Fellows.” Previous fellows of the program include Foursquare, Etsy, and Warby Parker. Winners will be set up with mentors like Ben Lerer and the President of MTV, Stephen Friedman, to guide them through the next stage of their business and to connect them to powerful insiders. Submissions are being accepted now and the deadline is November 30, 2012.

Trippy Ted Talk TEDxSiliconAlley 2012, will be held on December 3rd, at Terminal 5. "How to Create a Mind" author Ray Kurzweil will be headlining the event and thhere will be keynotes by Makerbot founder Bre Pettis and philosopher Francessca Ferrando. Pink Floyd keyboardist Jon Carin will perform some of his music live, which is sure to make this the first TED Talk that makes people want to spark up a joint.

Side Piece SideTour, the company that sends you on fun group adventures, has now expanded its efforts to Chicago. CEO and co-founder Vipin Goyal told VentureBeat that the company is now booking three SideTours a day and plans to launch their service in Washington D.C. by the end of the year. Private chef dinners and small group art tours are ready for the masses!

Buy Everything Now Landlord is a new game that uses Foursquare to let you "buy" any location that your adventurous checking-in heart desires. Owners of property get rent paid to them based off of the number of checkins to the venue, so that they can buy more property and expand their empire. We're going to rush out to Staten Island and buy out the entire island, so then we can come back to Manhattan and rule the world.

We Love Those Lady Pilgrims Hacksgiving, the Thanksgiving themed Hackathon, will take place on November 9-10^th. Technology and design firm, The Control Group, is putting the event with Hack'n Jill and it will be the first hackathon with NY Tech Meetup that has at least 50 percent females in attendance. You can register on Hack'n Jill's website. Startups in search of tech talent should try to cop a ticket, these ladies can code.

A Personal Assistant With Your Pepsi? Pepsi is partnering with TaskRabbit to bring an extra hour of the day to drinkers of their new soda, Pepsi Next. Over the next four weeks, the two companies are giving 200 people a dedicated TaskRabbit for one hour to tackle errands of their choosing. This can include waiting in line for something, cooking dinner, or a bunch of other really helpful things. TaskRabbits show up with a can of soda for you too which is a bonus if you're thirsty. All it takes to enter is a simple registration.

Like For Old Ladies, But Better If you're into planning your shopping trips from home snagging deals while you shop, Shopkick already had you covered. But if you're into browsing Sunday circulars, then the app's newest update will make you happy too. The app just got a complete redesign that now features themed lookbooks that resemble glossy coupon circulars. They should just partner with TLC and make "Extreme Shopkicking" already.

Watch Those Tweets Fly HootSuite just launched a new product for their Enterprise clients. It's called the HootSuite Command Center and it functions like a virtual situation room for all of your company's social media efforts. So ChartBeat for the Twitter and Facebook set? Every social media manager in New York just swooned.

Look Here Cheap Bros Buystand, a startup which uses a name-your-price model for active lifestyle goods, launches in beta today. Customers browse merchandise from from brands like Burton, Vans, and Puma, and then name what they want to pay. Buystand sets up the customer with a retailer willing to pay that price. Instead of using wholesale markdowns, the company gets to have sales on customers terms. Mark October 17th in your calendars as the days that outdoor bros started saving money.

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.