Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Buffalo Tech Consolidation - The OpenCoffee Club


Steve Poland sent an email out to Buffalo BarCamp members today which is directly inline with my goals and a startup consolidation initiative that I've been planning since attending Boulder Startup Week. Seeing as this was just posted to a Facebook group, I'm posting it here so that it can referenced by people outside of Facebook.

I think that there's a strong tech community in Buffalo, but everyone is spread out and separated into niche groups. We need more community interaction. Let's start to have our local startups share ideas, problems, and solutions. We need to create a forum for entreprenuers to interact with each other. This cross polination will help out our community as a whole, while strengthening each startup along the way.

It's all about "co-opertition" (cooperative competition).

The OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow. This is the online complement to that offline network. Meet people, find out what's going on nearby you and then go and take part.

I really want to see the tech scene in Buffalo talking. I'd like to see start-ups start to blossom from this area. I'd like to see experienced techies in Buffalo lend their knowledge to UB students. I'd like to see Buffalo techies *stay* in Buffalo. We need to network -- we need to help each other. It's Buffalo vs the world. Let's do what we can to help start-ups and area business grow, to create more jobs, and ultimately more opportunity for everyone.

Come join us weekly at Panaro's at 571 Delaware Avenue (corner of Delaware and Allen St). They aren't typically open, but will be for us between 7:30am - 9:00am on Tuesdays. We'll meet, network, discuss stuff in tech, talk geek, learn about we're all interested in and working on, etc.

There's no wifi, so bring your tethered connections and mifi hubs. I know people will want to reference some stuff online, but the idea is to just get us talking offline. Meeting new people in our area with tech passions.

And then hopefully we can get some BarCamps lined up.

Spread the word -- please email/forward this to all your geek friends in Buffalo!

Thanks,
Steve Poland
http://www.facebook.com/l/5ac2f;blog.stevepoland.com/about