Feed

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

By Gary Sharma 3/11 2:30pm

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie_new

Best Tech Events This Week (Enterprise Tech Meetup, Fashion 2.0 Awards, Investor Feedback Forum, Entrepreneurs Roundtable, NJ Tech Meetup)

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.

Hi folks,

Hackathons are all the rage these days, and even the White House is hopping on the bandwagon. they held their first hackathon a couple of weeks ago, welcoming 21 programmers and tech experts to spend the day working alongside seven members of the administration’s own development team on the online petitions platform We the People. Check out the videos. Read More

By Gary Sharma 3/04 9:36am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie_at_sxsw_2013

Best Tech Events This Week (BRITE Conference, Games Hackathon, BUZZtheBar Launch Party, Tech@NYU DemoDays, Future of Food, Inaugural Latino Tech Meetup, Women 2.0)

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.

I recently visited a friend at her offices in Union Square. As she gave me the grand tour, she pointed at a room: “That used to be Andy Warhol’s office.” I paused. THE Andy Warhol? Yup! Apparently the building became home to Warhol’s Factory back in 1973. It struck me that in today’s world of Twitter and Instagram and fans and followers and micro-celebrities, Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” quote had finally come true. Read More

By Gary Sharma 8:45am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie_at_sxsw_2013

Best Tech Events This Week (NYU Entrepreneurs Festival, Startup Weekend EDU, Silicon Harlem Launch Party, ITP Big Screens, DUMBO Startup Lab Demo Day, Entrepreneurs Roundtable)

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.

You get an Oscar. And you get an Oscar. Everyone gets an Oscar! Well, maybe not everyone, but spreading the love was very much the theme of Hollywood’s big night, with awards divided fairly equally among Argo, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Les Miserables, Django, Skyfall and others. Best photobomb goes to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and @RichardDreyfuss took home best tweet: “I always dreamed that the score of one of my films would be used to play people off at the Oscars. We did it, Steven!” Also, really liked Ben Affleck’s heartfelt and emotional acceptance speech: “‎It doesn’t matter how much you get knocked down in life, you gotta get back up.” Word. Read More

By Gary Sharma 2/18 9:06am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie_at_sxsw_2013

Best Tech Events This Week (Social Media Week, Funding the Best in Global Innovation, Queens Tech Meetup, Assembled E-Commerce, DreamIt Happy Hour, Running Away with the Band)

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.

Last week was crazy. First, the pope resigned (last time that happened? 1415). Then, a 55-foot-wide meteor crashed into the little Russian town of Chelyabinsk, sparking a 300-kiloton blast. Whoa. And then, an asteroid narrowly missed Earth (by a mere 17,000 miles). Yikes. Aaaand then….then everybody really went crazy and started doing the Harlem Shake! Google’s doing it. So are Facebook and Linkedin. Even my friends at WeWork, BuzzFeed, CollegeHumor, NYU Stern & ERA have gotten in on the action. There’s a cute puppy version and even a bookmarklet. Yup, it was a crazy, crazy week indeed!

Wanna hang out with David Pakman (Venrock), Esther Dyson (angel investor), John Frankel (ff Venture Capital) and other top investors at the Funding the Best in Global Innovation conference this Wednesday? But of course you do! I have a couple of free passes; email me if interested. (You also get 30 percent off with discount code “innovation”). Read More

By Gary Sharma 2/11 8:49am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie_at_sxsw_2013

Best Tech Events This Week (HackInteractive, TechCrunch NYC, OnDeck Sports Conference, One of a Kind, Decoded Fashion, Columbia PE/VC Conference)

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.

First things first: Stop reading this and go watch “House of Cards” on Netflix. Yup, it’s that good. You’re welcome!

Back? Okay! Hope y’all survived the weekend #snow-pocalypse (a.k.a. Nemo) and had a blast sledding in the park, hurling snowballs at each other and making elaborate snow sculptures. Here’s an awesome Vine mashup of the storm that my friends Kelsey and Steve made.

Now that you’ve had your winter fun, it’s time to get ready for spring. And that can only mean one thing: internships! That’s right. It’s that time of the year again, when bright-eyed young kids will be running around your offices eager to learn the ropes, change the world, and…err… get you your early-morning fix of decaf-grande-mocha-soy lattes.  So, who’s looking for interns? Everybody, that’s who! Squarespace, Metamorphic Ventures, UrbanDaddy, HowAboutWe, ff Ventures, MoviePass, Birchbox, Artsicle, Learnvest and many, many more. Read More

By Gary Sharma 2/04 10:00am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie_sxsw

Best Tech Events This Week (Hearst Fashion Hackathon, Social Commerce Summit, NY Tech Meetup, PandoMonthly)

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.

Congrats to the Ravens for winning the Super Bowl! Best of the commercials? That’d be Chrysler’s So God Made A Farmer ad. Beyoncé rocked the half-time show (and flashed the Illuminati sign?). Yes, there was a brief blackout, enough to unleash a torrent of funny tweets. Oreos won the night, social-media wise. And finally, there was Shaq, lip-syncing to Beyoncé’s “Halo.”  Read More

By Gary Sharma 1/28 8:30am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie_sxsw

Best Tech Events This Week (Lemonade Heroes Yacht Party, DreamIt Health Road Show, Decoded Fashion Hackathon, Startup City, Digital Dumbo, Brooklyn Tech Meetup)

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.

Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day to all ye community managers out there! You guys ‘n gals are on the front lines engaging with customers every day, putting out fires, making your customers smile, fostering conversation. Community is important and you guys are making it happen. Stay awesome! To celebrate, bitly is organizing a breakfast this Friday and later this month is the Community Manager UNconference.

My buddy Eyal and the good folks at WIN are organizing a must-attend conference later this month on February 21: Funding the Best in Global Innovation. Read More

By Gary Sharma 1/21 3:16pm

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie_sxsw

Best Tech Events This Week (The “Sponsor Gary’s Red Tie @ SXSW” Edition!)

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.

Sooooo…it’s that time of the year again. SXSW (a.k.a. Spring Break for Geeks) is right around the corner, running March 8 to 12 in Austin, Texas. And you know what that means: Parties, parties ‘n more parties!! So, once again, we’re putting together what we hope will be THE definitive guide to all this year’s SXSW Interactive parties. We’ll be updating this list regularly, so check back often. And email me if you’re organizing an event or a party. Read More

By Gary Sharma 1/14 8:30am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie

Best Tech Events This Week (Social Retail Summit, Twitter NYC Talk, Enterprise Tech Meetup, Tech Drinkup, Bronx Tech Meetup, Music Hackathon, Hardware Startup)

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.

First off, some sad news: R.I.P. Aaron Swartz. Aaron, who was based here in Brooklyn, was a brilliant mind, hacktivist and internet folk hero who co-authored the RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, joined the Reddit team in its earliest days and was the founder of DemandProgress, playing a key role in helping win the fight against SOPA/PIPA. Many friends have weighed in including Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow and danah boyd. Aaron was only 26 years old and it’s such a tragic loss for the internet community. Thoughts and condolences to his friends & family. Here’s the official statement from his family and here’s a video of Aaron on how we stopped SOPA. Read More

By Gary Sharma 1/07 9:00am

Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!

sponsor_garys_red_tie

Best Tech Events This Week (API HackDay, NY Tech Meetup, Invasion of the Hackathons, Creative Mornings, Investor Feedback Forum, NJ Tech Meetup, StartUP Series)

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.

So, the fiscal cliff has been averted, the NHL lockout is over (yeah!) and William Shatner (a.k.a. Captain James T. Kirk) tweeted at an astronaut–AND got a reply back. 2013 is off to a great start already! Read More