Silicon Beach Fest Celebrates Tech / Entertainment In LA
The first-ever Silicon Beach Fest attracted more than 2,000 attendees from LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara, New York, Toronto, and London to celebrate LA startups and entertainment with panels, parties, pitch fests, hackathon, and beach games: volleyball, basketball and surfing lessons in Santa Monica and Venice on June 21-23.
TechCrunch, Forbes, and other national and local media covered the fest, centered in Santa Monica and Venice at venues with views of the beach on picture-perfect sunny days.
“LA’s best chapter is about to be written,” said Eric Garcetti, LA City Council Member and Mayoral Candidate. He kicked off the fest with his opening keynote, saying LA is a unique city of mash-ups, where tech, startups and entertainment – plus creativity, cultures, and passion – mix with successful results. “Let us come together and celebrate…”
The mashup theme was reflected in the SBF programming, which included panels highlighting accelerators, VCs, startups, developers, movies, TV, music, web content, art, fashion, social good, surf & skate, and more. Panels were based at hubs including Leadership, Branding / Advertising, Social Media, Entrepreneurs, Community and more.
Speakers gave engaging insights on panels, from companies including: VCs, accelerators (StartEngine, Amplify, Launchpad, MuckerLab, Originate), entertainment (Sony Pictures, FOX, NBC, The GRAMMYs, Interscope Universal Music Group), startups (BeachMint,
ShoeDazzle, Pose, Viddy, Mogreet, DocStoc, PageWoo, PromoJam, Machinima, Riot Games, SGN), advertising (OMD, Ignited, Deutsch, TBWA \ Chiat \Day, Edelman, engage:BDR), as well as CAA, Klout, Ustream, Rock the Vote, and many more.
Silicon Beach Fest, created by Digital LA and presented by engage:BDR, is the first startup / entertainment fest in LA with programming by tech community team effort including companies (Digital LA, engage:BDR, StartEngine, TechZulu, PromoJam, PageWoo, venues (Hotel Erwin, Viceroy Hotel, Cross Campus, Coloft, CoWorks, Working Village, io/LA).
“It’s great to get the tech and Hollywood communities together to celebrate digital innovation,” said Kevin Winston, creator of the Silicon Beach Fest, and Digital LA CEO/Founder. “You could feel the energy and excitement from getting everyone together, from the opening party to the inspiring panels; the creative pitches at the hackathon, demo day, angel pitch fest, and student pitch fest; and the good-times bonding from the nightly parties to the beach volleyball court. Tons of info and tons of fun!”
Attendees love the SBF energy. “Thank you for putting together such a fantastic festival with such smart minds and genuinely collaborative people from so many parts of Digital LA and beyond,” said Callie Miller, a panelist on the PR for Startups panel. “I had an incredible time, met so many great people, and I’m inspired by several of my SBF conversations to launch three new projects in LA. This would not have happened without SBF.”
More info can be found here.
