Technology and entrepreneurship are co-joined in so many ways and for so many reasons. One area is economic development where entrepreneurship and technology are seen as symbiotic in creating high paying jobs and helping to revitalize American urban areas and inner cities. Newark Tech Week just recently held brought focus to the positive impact that technology is having in Newark. It enabled people to see Newark thru a different lens via a series of well-organized and attended events that showcased local technology and entrepreneurship, temporarily over shadowing downcast news headlines commonly associated with urban challenges.
NJIT and Rutgers Business School, both having a big presence in Newark, as well as being two of the three prominent sponsors of Newark Tech Week, have economic development as a part of their mission. This is also seen through various other programs offered outside of Newark Tech Week to the Newark community such as Lean Startup Machinejust recently held at NJIT and the Entrepreneurs Pioneers Initiative offered by The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development at Rutgers Business School New ark and New Brunswick.
Newark Tech Week was hosted by the two Universities in conjunction with Brick City Development Corporation and Blerdology. The former is an economic development catalyst for Newark that is organized to attract and enhance small and minority business capacity and spur real estate development. The latter is a social enterprise focused on promotion of the black technology community and is known for hackathons that raise money for the community. The Tech Week events included: TEDxNJIT: A Digital Connections Conference, a Newark Tech Happy Hour, STEM Education Day and a Rutgers Business School & Scarlet Start-ups Program entitled The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Business in Any Field.
The TEDxNJIT was held on the NJIT campus and was entitled ConnectionsAll Things Digital. This was the third consecutive year that NJIT had hosted TEDxNJIT and again the evening event brought out some name local technology people such as Carlos Dominguez, Sr. Vice President of Cisco, Michael Smith, Chief Digital Officer of Forbes Media, Guy Story CTO and Chief Scientist at Audible.com and Randal Pinkett, Apprentice winner and Founder of BCT Partners.
TEDxNJIT is an independently run TEDx event and the program follows the guidelines of the TEDx organization. Each participating speaker discussed digital technology which was interspersed with videos provided by TEDx on the theme. Presentations ranged from an overview of technology’s impact on society by Don Sebastian, NJIT SVP for Research and Development to Lyneir Richardson, CEO of Brick City Development Corporation stressing the importance of the residing community of Newark be connected to and a beneficiary of the technology mostly centered in downtown Newark to Guy Story giving a funky guitar narrative exploring how technology is impacting the brain and how information is exchanged and absorbed.
If one listened to the passion of the various speakers or simply absorbed the positive energy of just one of the events , the hosting organizations succeeded in offering a substantive narrative about the progress being made in Newark and the prospects for sustaining positive change furthered by technology and entrepreneurship.
