Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Walkabout NYC 2012 Recap: Startup-Hopping In the City

This year, I was lucky enough to hear about Walkabout NYC, a semi-annual startup-hopping event, just days before it took place.

What inspired me to sign up for an afternoon spent rushing around SoHo, Bowery, and the Flatiron District? Well, for starters, I love going to events in the city where I'm likely to run into cool and interesting people. And, as a freelancer writer, I'm basically running the "startup of me" - so it never hurts to get new ideas, especially when they're related to marketing, media, branding, or technology.

Walkabout NYC turned out to be a great opportunity to visit the beautiful Silicon Alley offices of OpenPlans, Campfire, Gin Lane Media, and Flightpath. At each location, my fellow Walkabouters and I were treated to insights into the company's products and services, customer base, and origins, along with some great views and tasty treats. The startups were forced to get creative with squeezing a lot of content into a small amount of time - within the space of the hour, participants had to arrive from their previous location, listen to a presentation, indulge in snacks, ask questions, and be off on their merry way to the next destination.

Job-seekers, students looking for internships, people interested in launching their own startups, investors,and anyone interested in making contacts in the startup world or learning more about some cool companies all found plenty of great information to sink their teeth into, and a great time was had by all. It would have been nice to spend a bit more time at each location, and actually get a chance to talk one-on-one with more of the employees and other participants, but seeing such a variety of places in rapid-fire succession provided a great look into the New York City startup scene.

I originally intended to cover all four companies in one post, but realized that the wealth of information I gathered was more than enough for a whole series. So, I hope you enjoy this intro, and stay tuned for my discussion of OpenPlans and what I took away from visiting the company.

Want to learn more about Walkabout? Follow them on Twitter: @WalkaboutNYC

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