#VegasTech

When I first moved to Vegas, I couldn’t find a lot of tech-minded folks outside of our company. One of the guys I met at IGT, a casino company that uses Torque, asked me if I knew of any tech focused groups –but I didn’t. Until I met the folks at #VegasTech.

I found a story on Google news about one of TechCrunch’s writers moving to Las Vegas to build his new start-up. His position was that Vegas is the best place on earth to start a new tech company. We are a quick flight to tech centers like San Fran and SoCal, Seattle, and Austin; our housing is very affordable; and we have more conference space, restaurants, and nightlife of a city ten times our size. The VegasTech movement was centered at a local coffee shop called the Beat. I drove down that night to do some investigating.

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I arrived at an empty coffee shop. Is this the tech mecca I was reading about? I asked the girl working behind the counter about the growing technology group that was meeting here. She acted like she wasn’t sure what I was talked about and then suggested, “oh, yea, that thing on Thursday night upstairs.”

Behind the “curtain” of this coffee shop was an awesome experiment in expression, art and technology. This coffee shop was built in an old medical center and the former patient rooms are now rentable space for anyone who wants to sell, display, or provide services that are art related. There are galleries, marketing companies, and even a hair salon. Its bohemian atmosphere instantly grabbed me. Something cool is happening here!

The hive for the technology movement is a technology focused library on the second floor. It’s aptly named the usr/lib. I attended the meetup the next night and was blown away by attendance. There were fifty or so people packed into a space designed for twenty.

I’ve attended many meetings since and have met a lot of great entrepreneurs. The framework for this group is driven by Zappos, the on-line retailer. The company is moving downtown and has become the catalyst for a lot of the enthusiasm surrounding Vegas’ potential as great place to start a company. Their CEO, Tony Hsiesh is personally investing triple digit millions to get things going.

But now it’s time for me to contribute. Tomorrow, a handful of guys from our office and I are going to teach the first of a three session course on T3D. The cost is $50 dollars and all proceeds benefit the library. We’ve sold out of 20 seats!

The challenge is that I plan to teach 40 hours of material in 9…how? Well, first, I plan to make it extremely interactive. We don’t have time for lecture, rinse, repeat. I’m going to break up the attendees into groups of five so that guys who are getting it quickly can help me teach others in their group. I’ve set up a point system to incentivize team collaboration. Points can be redeemed for 1st party goodies on our site.

I took a survey monkey poll to determine the skill set of those who are attending and overall, they would identify themselves as intermediate/beginner programmers. So the first thing we are doing tomorrow night is begin some scripting lessons.

Overall, my goal over the next three days is to inspire people. Give them the ability to do something they weren't able to do the day before. Their energy and enthusiasm has inspired me to teach this course (plus it’s good to exercise our tutorial) –it’s great to have the opportunity to return the favor.