The Northside Festival is New York City’s largest and most accessible discovery festival. From June 12-19, bands, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, innovators, and nearly 80k people converged upon Brooklyn for eight days of innovation and discovery.
Since its inauguration in 2009, The Northside Festival has grown from a small get-together-like event to a full fledged festival, complete with multiple venues, national touring musicians, and corporate sponsors. This year, the most innovative minds of the film, music, and tech industries descended upon Brooklyn and gave a glimpse into the future.
The weeklong event consisted of a music festival, a film festival, an innovations summit with keynote speakers, and a tech-focused and startup friendly trade show. The trade show component is akin to New York Tech Day on steroids.
Start Ups, Start Your Engines!
The Northside Festival #NSIDE Trade Show serves as a hotbed of collaboration for the tech industry’s movers and shakers. The New York City startup community is filled with ambitious young professionals with amazing ideas and eager investors, ready to be hailed as the next “genius” among the VC crowd. Some of this year’s exhibitors included some big names in the startup tech industry like Uber, Shopify, and GILT group.
We’re back for day 2 of @northsidefest. Come on by and say hello! pic.twitter.com/kmrWrPQZKM
— Uber NYC (@Uber_NYC) June 13, 2014
An UBER rep shows off the company’s mobile app at The Northside Festival Trade Show
As the Northside Festival continues its bid to solidify itself as the SXSW of the East, the 2014 event saw the first implementation of a cool new initiative – inviting a guest country to come and work in NYC for three months. This year, three companies from the Netherlands were on hand and came on strong, eventually winning the “Dutch Pitch Session.” The three winning teams were awarded three months of access to working space and meeting rooms in the Dutch consulate in NYC.
Music Festival Madness
Perhaps the most talked about and attended elements of The Northside Festival were the seemingly endless streams of live music. This year, Scottish electronic band CHVRCHES headlined the festival. Other well-known national acts such as Beirut, and the Heliotropes played alongside nearly 400 other bands, most of which were hometown acts. Keep in mind that all shows took place in Williamsburg or Greenpoint, Brooklyn – such geographical concentration of venues and shows is hard to beat.
Scottish Electronic Group CHVRCHES Performing at Northside Festival
What’s next for the NYC Startup Scene?
As previously mentioned, the NYC startup scene is booming like never before. Do you want to stay in tune with what’s next in that space? Check out these upcoming startup oriented events:
- Social Media 201 presented by Media Bistro (July 1 – August 5: http://buff.ly/1wCexkN)
- NYC TechBreakfast (July 15 8:00-10:00 am: http://buff.ly/1lSOfqK)
- 3 Day Startup BYC Summer 2014 Program hosted by Bitcoin Center NYC (July 25 – 27: http://buff.ly/1lSOiTn)
- Summer NYC VC & Angel Conference ($75) (August 7: http://buff.ly/1wCeVQb)
Have you been to a startup or technology event? Share your thoughts on your favorite one so far!