It’s official: The 10th annual Philly Tech Week will transform to all virtual

Like so many other traditions, in late March, the 10th annual Philly Tech Week presented by Comcast was postponed due to the pandemic.

In the months since, an economic crisis and a consequential movement toward social justice have taken center stage.

To some, these may have been seen as distractions or obstacles. To us at Technical.ly, a community journalism publication that leads the weeklong celebration of technology, entrepreneurship and innovation, we’ve understood these as the very point of why this community matters.

Through our reporting over these past few months, we’ve continued to inform you of ways to operate effectively in a virtual work environment and how to sustain (and even grow) business during a pandemic and now-official recession. More recently, we’ve continued our long tradition of covering racial equity through the lens of local innovation communities.

We intend to continue to keep all of these societal fault lines top of mind in our PTW event programming. Accordingly:

Today we are announcing a newly imagined 10th annual #PTW20. A summertime series of virtual events will culminate with our first-ever fully virtual Philly Tech Week, Sept. 21 through 25. 

We also say here that, though certainly we’ve been reminded the world can change quickly, we plan to bring the 11th annual PTW back to spring, from May 7 through 15 — but it will never be the same, in part because of what we’ve learned we can do together we mix the best of both in-person and virtual experiences.

Let’s share how we got to the rest of 2020.

Since March, our team has had dozens of intensive conversations with many of you, and we maintained one event during the first week of May — our successful Introduced|Virtual conference — the original dates that we had been working toward for 18 months. It was a stripped-down version of Introduced, Technical.ly’s conference focused on building better companies. Nearly 500 of you joined us, and your feedback was deeply informative.

Most importantly of all, we went back to the PTW mission statement: to connect people who use new tools to make better futures for all communities.

The nature of PTW is that of a true cross-section of this region’s innovation economy — technologists, entrepreneurs and institutions. This isn’t an artificial tech-washing. This is you. This is Philadelphia, throughout its history. Innovation Been Here is a theme that you’ll see more of.

Here’s what you can expect:

PTW20 Virtual Summer Series

The PTW20 Virtual Summer Series will continue with select partnered events through early September. Dates and information will be shared as they become available. To date, the following have been confirmed:

June

• June 24: PTW20 Virtual Partner Event — WhatsNext, in partnership with Ballard Spahr

July

• Gaming Day, with Nerd Street Gamers and Balti Virtual — “How a Pandemic Changes Your Local Gaming Industry”
• Professional Development Day, with Generocity and Technical.ly — INTER/VIEW Virtual
• Startup Day — “Now What: Next Steps for Your Startup,” a discussion with Amplify Philly

August

• Software Day — Software and Super Meetup
• Arts Day — “Innovation of the Arts in Time of Pandemic,” a discussion with Amplify Philly

September

• Impact Day, with Generocity — “Pandemic Threat: How is Philadelphia Responding for its Most Vulnerable Citizens?”

The official 10th annual Philly Tech Week, Sept. 21-25

• Community events will begin on Monday, Sept. 21, and finish on Friday, Sept. 25.
• The Dev Conference and Introduced will be held during the week of Sept. 21 through 25.
• The Signature Event will be held Friday evening, Sept. 25.

We are always humbled by the sheer volume of people and organizations who are willing to give their time, talent and energy to provide the community with opportunities to connect, learn and grow.

PTW has always been a community of people. Where and how we gather may change, but the quality and common goals of our interactions never will.

Our promise to you is to continue to honor that and deliver a new world of experiences that keep people connected, informed, engaged and inspired. Together we will recover and build anew.

Stay tuned as we will roll out more details for these new virtual experiences.

Get updates on speakers, sessions, attendee specials and more. Sign up for Philly Tech Week emails today:

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