Attending
Attending is always great and you are welcome to attend any event you can get signed up for. I really enjoy meeting all of the attendees and learning about what they do and what interesting projects they are working on. Usually the spots go fast so I recommend signing up on this wiki to ensure advance notice of the events.

Speaking/Pitching
If you are interested in speaking at one of the events, thank you for your interest!! These events are a great way to connect with the local tech community in a setting that brings out a unique sampling of the community. Being that these are held during the work day, the attendees are usually different than attendees of evening events around Seattle. Hosting the event or being a major sponsor is a guarantee to an option for speaking or demo’ing at an event. If sponsoring is not what you are interested in, let us know and I can tie you into one of the companies who is sponsoring other speakers from the community.

Past Speakers have included:
Scott Berkun
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Rich Barton
Michael Arrington
Rand Fishkin

Sponsoring
There are several ways you can sponsor. The advantages are different for each sponsorship levels.
As a host – Host sponsors have the exclusive advantage of opening their doors to a group of attendees eager to meet the company. When you open your doors to 50-100 Seattle techies an interesting thing happens. The community develops an immediate appreciation for your company. Whether the attendee is a blogger, a potential future employee, a future business partner, or someone just looking for free food, they will get a feel for what drives your company and be able to appreciate what you do.

As a monthly sponsor – Monthly sponsors really bring out the community aspect of these lunches and happy hours. There are lots of companies who want to participate  and sometimes just hosting the event is a big cost (lost productivity, time invested in ensuring the facilities are ready, etc). For these events, the monthly sponsors really make the difference, swooping in and picking up costs for food, drinks, or even giveaways. The monthly sponsors are always mentioned at the event and usually end up speaking or demo’ing at the event as well. Once paired with a good host, the monthly sponsor gets to share in the rave reviews for the host’s space and culture and also get’s a chance to approach this unique part of the community.

See the past events page for the monthly sponsors and hosts

As a partnering sponsor – Partnering sponsorship is an annual sponsorship. Partnering sponsors get continuous recognition at all of the events through ad spots on the web site and live mentions at the events themselves. The partnership sponsors are the names in the background that get associated with the TechCafe name. The funds from partnership sponsors go directly to ensuring an ongoing calendar of lunches and happy hours can be maintained. This happens through covering general costs, food, and/or venue for lunches where other sponsors could not be secured. Access to put special messages in front of this unique crowd over a sustained period of time is only available through this partnering sponsorship.

Partnership Sponsers include:
Fenwick & West, LLP

If you have any questions about these, don’t hesitate to contact Josh Maher:
Josh.Maher@gmail.com
http://joshmaher.net
206-234-6327