What Mattered in 2012: Kevin Winston, Digital LA
1. What was the biggest news for you/your firm this year?
The biggest news for Digital LA this year has been creating and spearheading Silicon Beach Fest, LA's first startup entertainment community festival in Santa Monica and Venice in June, 2012. There was energy and excitement in the air with more than 2,000 startup and entertainment attendees mostly from LA, and also curious VCs, investors and angels from Silicon Valley, Chicago, and New York. We met and shared ideas and business cards, from the opening party at the Viceroy, to the packed panels starring Silicon Beach accelerators, VCs, startup CEOs, digital content creators, movie, music, games, and PR pros; hackathon, demo days, student pitch fests, parties and more. At the closing party, attendees kept saying "This is great! When's the next one?" So we did a one-day fall Silicon Beach Fest at io/LA in Hollywood. Both Silicon Beach Fests featured LA Mayoral Candidate Eric Garcetti, and were covered in several Forbes articles, TechCrunch, PandoDaily, and national and local press. We'll head back to the beach on the first week of summer for a week-long Silicon Beach Fest in Santa Monica June 2013. In addition to Silicon Beach Fest, we also held Digital LA events at Sundance, SXSW, E3, Comic-Con, and in London during the Olympics. We launched a Digital LA - Women series with four panels starring female founders, entrepreneurs, developers and PR, which will also continue into the new year. All of these new Digital LA activities reflects the energy and dynamic nature of LA's digital community, with thanks to our friends at TechZulu, PageWoo, StartEngine, Amplify, Launchpad, MuckerLab, io/LA, Cross Campus, ROC, startup CEOs, USC, UCLA, and many more!
4. What are the technologies, companies, or things we ought to watch in 2013?
In LA tech, keep watch on our accelerators, coworking spaces, content creators, and startup CEOs over the next year. This past year 2012 was all about forming teams, picking players, and choosing uniforms. Now the stage is set for Silicon Beach to really start to play ball in 2013.
Read the full interview here: http://www.socaltech.com/what_mattered_in_____kevin_winston_digital_la/s-0046953.html