By Andy Wilson — July 16, 2013
It is hard to believe that it has been just over 2 weeks since our great launch event at Twin Palms. I think some of us have just recovered (that is the downside of being an all volunteer group!) The committee did a GREAT job with special thanks to Michelle from the City, Tom from Materia, Tom from Idealab, Kristen from Spokeo and Petra for the website/logo work (among many others!). Also such a great event with free food and beverages couldn't have been possible without generous support from our sponsors (Materia, Guidance Software, Pasadena Angels, City of Pasadena, Spokeo, Strategic Law, KPPB Law, Rising Realty & Legacy Partners).
We had just about 500 people physically show up (which is perfect as that was essentially the capacity of the venue). It was a bit noisy and hard to settle the crowd for the 20 minutes of formal remarks from me and Mike (my IP co-chair), Mayor Bogaard, Mark from Art Center, Fred from Caltech and Kevin from Pasadena Angels. However I kept hearing various folks saying that "Pasadena is back" -- not sure where we went but we are back indeed!
We did a quick survey of the event (~100 responses) and it appears that the vast majority of participants thought the event was a great success. Here are a few high level stats:
- Demographics (can be in more than one category): 60% entrepreneurs, 25% investors, 32% C-level execs, 23% engineers and 16% designers
- An amazing 60% of the attendees said that would like to volunteer to help with IP activities
- 50% found the event to be either extremely useful or very useful
- 75% of attendees said the event was excellent or very good
We look forward to doing more large community events 1 - 2x per year. In the meantime, we urge you get involved in existing programs (TechSparks, Friday Coffee Meet-ups, upcoming start-up weekend (October) or Tech Leaders Forum (by application). Also, if you have a great idea for a new program or activity, please let us know at
hello@innovatepasadena.org. Our goal is to go from 4 programs to a dozen in the next 6 - 12 months. We'll do that by helping program innovators get started with a little seed capital and support with marketing/back-end from IP resources. Our goal is not to build a large paid staff but provide just enough resources to support those folks who want to make great things happen under our broad umbrella of innovation in our areas... so don't be shy, help spread the word and stay active! Be sure to join the conversation on our social channels: Facebook (
https://www.facebook.com/InnovatePasadena) and Twitter (
https://twitter.com/innovatpasadena).