Sept 2013: Celebrating 25 Years of Innovation in Santa Cruz

In conjunction with City of Santa Cruz Economic Development (http://www.cityofsantacruz.com/index.aspx?page=445), Cruzio (http://www.cruzio.com/), and NextSpace (http://nextspace.us/), SCNT MeetUp presents: Celebrating 25 Years of Innovation - a series of 3 monthly events celebrating the successes, journeys, and best practices of tech innovation in Santa Cruz.

Each monthly event will start with an update from Sara Isenberg / Santa Cruz Tech Beat (http://santacruztechbeat.com/) on the top 3 stories re: tech in Santa Cruz.

Next up, a guest speaker will chronicle the The History of Tech Innovation in Santa Cruz – the 80's, the 90's, and today . Peggy Dolgenos, founder of Cruzio will present the 80's for the September MeetUp. If you have memories you would like Peggy to share with the audience, please add your ideas at: https://civinomics.com/workshop/4JjQ/25-years-of-santa-cruz-geekery

Now for the meat of the MeetUp.

Journey of the Startup – three (3) Santa Cruz county startups will present their company, their journey from idea to business, an overview/demo of their product / solution innovation, followed by a Q&A from the audience. Realtime audience participation will be offered through an online Idea Contest, rewarding the audience with food & beverage certificates for the best idea on how s/he would/could use each presenting company's product/solution. Looker (http://looker.com/) and X2Engine (http://www.x2engine.com/) will kick off the Sept 4 event, and Tomfoolery (http://www.tomfoolery.com/) will kick off the October event. Pitch Sessions - three (3) individuals/teams will be given 5 minutes each to pitch their startup idea. Each individual or team will have 2.5 minutes to present their pitch deck to a panel of mentors. Mentors will then have 2.5 minutes to deliver feedback. Our audience will have the opportunity to interact with "Pitchers" and mentors. Qualification to pitch: you must have a pitch deck that can be presented in 2.5 minutes, and you must be actively working on your idea/startup in Santa Cruz. For consideration, please contact Doug Erickson via the SCNT MeetUp. This session will be moderated by Andrew Mueller from TechRaising (http://techraising.com/). Mentors to be announced. Learn about hot new web technologies and mingle with 100+ fellow entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers, and tech enthusiasts. This event will be packed, so be sure to RSVP early. Doors open at 6:30pm, presentations start at 7:00pm. Audience entry fee is $5. Food & beverage will be included. RSVP NOW!!!