harvesthq/how-to-walkabout

How To Organize Your Own Walkabout Event

Harvest, a leader in time tracking, created WalkaboutNYC in 2010, and has been organizing this event in New York City each year since. Over the years, we've had many inquiries from people who want to organize Walkabouts outside New York City, so we decided to open source the idea, and share our experience. We hope that this will help you along as you prepare for your own event.

What's so special about Walkabout?

• Creates a backdrop for neighbors to meet neighbors, and connects folks interested in the local tech scene.
• Strengthens tech/startup community.
• Increases awareness of hosting companies to other neighboring companies.
• Allows for a “behind the scenes” look at how startups work and their workspaces.
• Recruiting/attracts talent.

Why would companies want to participate?

• It’s a good opportunity to tell people who you are, and what you do, create fans, introduce yourself to new users.
• It’s a great way to connect with people in your area, and introduce them to the people behind the company name: creates a personal connection.
• Good talent is hard to find. This is one more way to meet potential hires.

How we envision Walkabout in other cities:

• Here at Harvest, we support the idea of Walkabout, and we aim to help others create connections with their neighbors.
• We envision it running much like a syndicate, with folks in the specific city organizing the event themselves. This way, it can be run by people who would know best about the tech companies, environment, events, and local customs.
• Share how your event went in your city, so that we can learn from you as well - let’s share the knowledge and help each other! Drop us a line in the issues section.

How to get started hosting in your city:

• Partner with a city-wide event or trade show (in NYC, we partnered with Internet Week).
• Partner with city government.
• Identify the major players in your city, and get them on board first. Once you reach a critical mass and have some companies confirmed, others will follow.
• Allot more time than you think you’ll need - each year, we've run out of time for many ideas we wanted to execute on.
• Set up a website, with a map that’s easily viewable via mobile phone.
• Places to get the word out: government agencies, incubator spaces, reputable universities with tech programs, places that job seekers look.

Tell me more!

Sure! Go to further_walkabout_details.md in this repository, and read the Harvest blog post about WalkaboutNYC lessons learned.

Resources

You can use/modify the following assets for your own event. Find them in this repository, in the directory called walkabout-assets:

• Walkabout sticker design
• Walkabout signs
• Walkaboutnyc.com
• Walkaboutnyc.com instructions

Check out our current WalkaboutNYC site to see how we've changed things, and get creative!

Documentation of past WalkaboutNYC events:

• WalkaboutNYC 2012 Storify
• WalkaboutNYC 2010 - 2012 photos

The Story Behind WalkaboutNYC

Danny Wen and Shawn Liu, the founders of Harvest, have always enjoyed taking tours of creative and entrepreneurial workspaces. No matter what size, they found the spaces always fostered inspirational energy. Today, Harvest HQ has become a gathering point where the founders invite others to visit their workspace and share their tools of the trade.

In an effort to enable others to benefit from these types of experiences, the team at Harvest created the first WalkaboutNYC in 2010. The goal is simple: to put New York City’s vibrant tech scene on the map, and to inspire each other and the growing generation of entrepreneurs.

Feedback

Please direct all feedback, questions and issues to the issues section.

Walkabout Credits

• Built by Harvest. Want to work on projects like this? We’re hiring!
• Concept by Danny Wen and Shawn Liu
• Contribution, organization, and documentation by Karen Schoellkopf
• Additional notes by Kristine Lauria