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Longmont Startup Week 2018 Schedule Goes Live

The schedule for Longmont Startup Week 2018 (LSW18) is now available to the public. This year's Startup Week will take place Monday, July 23 to Friday, July 27 and you can find the schedule by visiting https://www.longmontstartupweek.com/schedule/ .
Startup week
Longmont Startup Week 2018 unveiling party at CoSolve on Friday, June 29, 2018. (Photo provided by Lachlan Quintana)

This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

The schedule for Longmont Startup Week 2018 (LSW18) is now available to the public. This year's Startup Week will take place Monday, July 23 to Friday, July 27 and you can find the schedule by visiting https://www.longmontstartupweek.com/schedule/.

This year's schedule is based around the LSW18 theme, "Smarter. Together." According to the LSW18 website, "drawing together members of the community across the boundaries of industry, job function, and background, Longmont Startup Week events provide entertaining, interesting, and interactive content, unique perspectives, and a forum for our community to connect and share ideas."

The daily programming consists of six tracks: designer, developer, growth, capital, founder, and product. These tracks are, "oriented toward critical functional roles within a startup team," states the Startup Week website.

LSW18 will host over 100 speakers, including 10 key speakers. There are over 100 sessions to attend during the week all located at different venues around Longmont.

President and CEO of Longmont Economic Development Partnership, Jessica Erickson, answered the following questions concerning the schedule for LSW18:

What is new/different from this year’s schedule compared to last year's?

While the foundational tracks for LSW18 are the same as last year, this year’s schedule really focuses on startups and entrepreneurs at every stage, focusing on creators, commerce, capital, and community with themes threading throughout addressing the roles of diversity and inclusivity, as well as technology, in building an entrepreneurial ecosystem and setting Longmont apart from other communities as a civic lab city.

I also think there’s a lot more “doing” built into this schedule. Certainly, much of the schedule is about learning, but this year Startup Longmont has really taken the reins in building a schedule that gives attendees an opportunity to actually apply that learning throughout the week.

There’s also the difference in the schedule itself, which is housed on a brand new Longmont Startup Week website www.longmontstartupweek.com. This site was developed in partnership with a local web development firm, gooWee, and students at the St. Vrain Valley School District’s Innovation Center. gooWee donated their time and talent to mentor students there, teaching them the coding language they used to develop the site.

How did the “Smarter. Together." theme influence, if any, this year’s schedule?

This year’s Longmont Startup Week theme is “Smarter. Together.” with a focus on smart cities and civic innovation, as well as a message that smart cities are about more than devices, data, and infrastructure, but also about inclusiveness, diversity, and collaboration.

How many sessions will be provided in Spanish / multilingual (sign language, etc)? What is the reasoning for creating Spanish/multi-lingual sessions?

We are striving to create a fully bilingual event this year! Longmont Startup Week is part of the Techstars Global Startup Week program, and we’ve heard from them that our fully bilingual startup week would be the first on the globe!!!

Much of our marketing is being done in both English and Spanish, and we have forged partnerships with Telemundo, KGNU, World Trade Center Denver, The Latino Chamber of Commerce and others to help drive attendance among our Latino community.

Most exciting is that we will have more than 100 events throughout the week that will offer translation technology to all attendees, with several being delivered in Spanish and translated to English. Additionally, all of our keynotes will offer ASL translation as well.

What are you, personally, looking forward to the most for LSW18?

That’s a tough question to answer. The full week is shaping up to be amazing! We have had great involvement from our track title sponsors Limina (Designer) and Xilinx (Developer) in developing some really cool hands on events and challenges that I think bring a whole new dynamic to the week.

There are a couple of speakers I really look forward to seeing as well: Morgan Smith will be back again this year for the third year addressing the generational divide in the workforce; Dr. Paul Grundy, known as the “godfather of patient centered healthcare” will be speaking at a session hosted by UCHealth addressing how big data and IT have the potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery and costs and where the opportunities are there for local innovators and entrepreneurs.

As a female executive, I am really excited to see so many sessions conquering the subject of women entrepreneurs and women in leadership.

Is there a session you think people will benefit the most by attending?

I have had the great privilege to get to know Dawnet Beverly, Friday’s closing keynote, and I encourage everyone to attend her talk at Village at the Peaks Friday afternoon. She has an incredible story of overcoming adversity and determining your own destiny, a message I really think will resonate with the Longmont entrepreneurial community. She will also be offering a call to action, reminding us that startup weeks are an annual celebration for our community, but the real work of building our ecosystem happens in the days, weeks, and months in between.

Do you want to attend Longmont Startup Week 2018 but are unable? The Longmont Observer will be there to live-stream/video as many of the sessions as we can. Are you attending and want to help us? All it takes is a smart phone and for you to be in attendance. Send an email to [email protected].