Sunday, September 18, 2016

1st Annual Timmy Awards

The 1st Annual Timmy Awards is a new event recognizing the best places for tech professionals to work. There will be cocktails, hor d'oeuvres, music, and product demos. The moderator for the night is Katie Roof from Tech Crunch and the award presenters are Kerry Davis from Engadget, Marc Acton from Mix 106.5, and Jennifer Elias from the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Categories include Best Tech Startup, Best Tech Work Culture, and Best Tech Manager.

The event will take place this Thursday, September 22nd from 6pm-9pm at the San Jose Women's Club. For more information head over to the Tech in Motion site. You can RSVP for free over here.


We're excited to present Silicon Valley's 1st Annual Timmy Awards in an effort to recognize the best places for technology professionals to work. We asked the Silicon Valley tech community to weigh in by nominating companies they believe deserve to win and then voting for the finalists!

Organizations and individuals will be crowned the winners of each of the categories below on September 22nd. The evening will begin with cocktails, hor d'oeuvres, music and product demos from the best of the best in Silicon Valley tech.

Silicon Valley's Best Technology Manager

Bill Hu – CEO of Kika Tech
Erik Kostelnik - Founder & CEO of TextRecruit
Han Jin - CEO of LucidCam
Venkatachalam Rangasamy – Principal Software Architect at Equinix
Waqaas Al-Siddiq - CEO of Biotricity

Silicon Valley's Best Technology Startup 

Avegant
Blue River Technology
Cloudian
DataVisor
Datos IO
Engagio
Liquid Robotics
Loop Commerce
Primary Data
Rubrik

Silicon Valley's Best Technology Work Culture 

Branch
Drawbridge
Identity Guard
Kespry
MATRIXX Software Inc.
Peloton Technology
Pinger, Inc.
Retail Solutions Inc. (RSi)
Shipwire
Whipsaw, Industrial Design and Engineering



Saturday, September 17, 2016

Cinequest doubling down on Virtual Reality

The main film festival for the most innovative place on earth absolutely needs to keep pace with technological innovations in film. That is why they are not just adding a Virtual Reality (VR) category, but they are actually renaming the whole event. Cinequest will now be know as the Cinequest Film & VR Festival. Within 24 hours of the announcement, they already received over 10 submissions.

The new name won't be the only change. Unfortunately, Cinequest may need a new venue this year as Camera 12 has shut down. I'll explain more in a separate post.

Source: SVBJ


Friday, September 16, 2016

Beers in Hell 2016

A unique event combining five craft breweries and 11 underground bands is coming to Johnny V's next weekend (Saturday, 9/24). Heavy San Jose, Ripple Music, and Doomed & Stoned are behind the festival which features heavy-blues, rock, and classic heavy metal music.

There will be 12 taps and brewery reps on site to talk beer and music. The breweries are Ballast Point, Lagunitas, Firestone Walker, Oskar Blues, and our very own Santa Clara Valley Brewing. SCVB will even concoct a special "Hell Brew IPA" just for the event.

Tickets are $20 and you can get additional perks and merch at the Indiegogo campaign over here. The event will run from 5pm to 1:30am at Johnny V's, 31 East Santa Clara Street.


About Heavy San Jose
Heavy San Jose is more than just a concert promotions company, we are creating a community of musicians, music lovers, and others in the industry who simply want to do what they love and help others do the same by offering as many ways as possible to support local music, see great live bands, and live a life filled with music. Our aim is to foster, help grow and bring further recognition to the Bay Area music scene, as well as to support the touring bands passing through.

To learn more visit:

Thursday, September 15, 2016

General Assembly is building a training campus in San Jose

General Assembly, an "Edtech" startup founded in 2011, already has 25,000 graduates from their 15 campuses across the globe. They train their students with practical skills that can be applied immediately to the most in-demand corporate jobs today (coding, web/app design, data science, marketing, et cetera).

They are expanding to 25 campuses by the end of the year and one of those will be in San Jose. The location is yet to be determined but they will host classes, workshops, and events at the new campus. Until the final space is acquired, they will be leveraging San Jose's co-working spaces--something they should be familiar with as General Assembly was originally going to be a co-working company.

General Assembly's only other Bay Area campus is in San Francisco.

Source: SVBJ


Wednesday, September 14, 2016

September 2016 Downtown Dimension Highlights

Here are my notes from the latest edition of Downtown Dimension:
  • The craft beer scene is exploding Downtown. Four new breweries will soon join the five existing breweries in the area. Two are near SoFA:
    • Uproar Brewing Co. at 439 S. First St. (opens this Fall)
    • Camino Brewing just south of 280
  • Forager is a unique concept with craft taps and cafe rental space coming to the South First Billiards space at 420 S. First St.
  • Brew Bike takes tasters for a Downtown pub crawl on a giant bike (steering is done by a designated cyclist). More info at sanjosebrewbike.com.
  • Land needed for Modera at San Pedro Square has been cleared and the 201-unit residential project should begin construction in 2017.
  • The Pierce (232 apartment project in SoFA) will have their first move-ins later this Fall.
  • TeenHQ is now open at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library. It includes a gamer lounge, recording studio, hangout zone, and makerspace. Visit sjpl.org/teenhq for more info.
  • Wework has opened five floors of co-working space at 75 E. Santa Clara Street, just about ISO Beers.
  • Intacct added a fourth floor with 20,000 SQFT to its corporate headquarters in the Riverpark II tower.
To read the newsletter, click here!

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

The Light Between Two Towers

Our good friend Thomas Wohlmut from WMS Media embarked on a mission to discover if there is any connection between the San Jose Light Tower and the Eiffel Tower. I think his findings will surprise a lot of people. The documentary film will be available in 2017, and the very first trailer is below!


The Light Between Two Towers - Trailer from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.



Largest dog festival in the US takes place this weekend in Downtown San Jose

I actually had no idea that Bark in the Park was the largest dog festival in the country. This year 15,000 dog lovers and 3,900 dogs are expected to attend. There will be food, drinks, 75 vendors for dog-specific goods and services, demonstrations, shows, and tons of contests (dog costume, dog/owner look-alike, tail wagging, etc.).

Proceeds will benefit local organizations including the Humane Society, San Jose Animal Care Center, and the Campus Community Neighborhood Association.

The event takes place on William and 16th Street in Downtown San Jose this Saturday, September 17th and runs from 10am-5pm. There is no cost of admission for humans or dogs. For more info, head over to the Bark in the Park website.


Monday, September 12, 2016

Viva Calle SJ 2016 is going down this Sunday

My favorite event in 2015 is returning this year with several improvements. During Viva Calle SJ, miles of city streets will be completely shut down to let people walk, bike, skateboard, or dance down the streets of San Jose. The route has changed a bit this year. Instead of extending to East San Jose, it will go to Japantown and Midtown instead and there will be even fewer intersections where the streets are not fully closed.

In 2016 there are four different "Activity Hubs," all of which are in new locations. These include the Arena Green in Downtown San Jose, W. San Carlos (Midtown), Willow Glen, and Japantown. Each hub has food, drinks, live music, vendors, and all-around good times. Last year I also noticed several stores and organizations were also setting up booths outside of the hubs. Try to visit as many as you can.

The event takes place Sunday, September 18th from 10am-3pm. It is completely free and has no designated beginning or end (it's not a race). You can use the handy map below to locate the routes and festivities. For more info, head over here. Hope to see you there!