Last week, Toronto hosted Tech Week. A city-wide celebration filled with events and workshops revolving around the Technology sector.
I had such a great time and wanted to share with you my experience and reasons to attend Tech Week in your city or nearest city hosting it.
Additionally I want to share some tips and suggestions to elevate your experience.
First of all, Tech Week is a great opportunity to learn new things. I listened to talks and participated in workshops where I learned about cutting edge technologies such as the latest quantum computers and agentic protocols.
It is also an opportunity to broaden your horizons and step out of your comfort zone. For instance I attended one morning of lectures and panels on how the public sector is handling AI adoption and ways to enable efficient collaboration between the public and private sectors. I have never worked in the public sector so it was a good opportunity for me to get a better understanding of the landscape and mechanisms in place in the sector.
It is an excellent opportunity to expand your network and meet interesting people who share similar interests to you. I pushed myself to make connections at each event I attended and now have multiple coffee chats lined up with people I met throughout the week. As a founder it is a great opportunity to find customers. As a job seeker it is also a chance to identify which companies are actively hiring. As a student it's a nice occasion to find a potential mentor.
It's also a moment to have fun and share good memories with others who share similar passions and interests as you. I went on a couple of runs with other developers, had a fun night out, participated in a great hackathon and gave a talk at an event about my Thinking Engineer Toolkit.
And it goes without saying that you will likely end the week with some free merch and a lot of free food and drinks! Your wallet will thank you, your diet not so much... But I counterbalanced this by walking as much as I could between events. This also became a chance for me to explore different parts of the city too.
A tip I want to share with you is to think about how you can add to your own experience while also providing value to others in the process. I came up with an experiment inspired by the Million Dollar Homepage (look it up if you don't know, it's one of the coolest internet experiments imo). The idea is I would approach other builders and ask if they want to share their project on my Builder's Grid for extra visibility.
This wall will live on the internet and people can check out different projects from builders attending Tech Week. Quite a few builders registered allowing me to create lots of nice connections and break the ice during networking events.
You can check out the Grid here:
https://ttw-builder-grid.vercel.app
Another tip is don't be afraid to approach other people. Push yourself to make at least 2-3 connections per event. It might feel awkward at the start but you will quickly feel more comfortable approaching others and building connections over time.
I also advise you to find the balance that is right for you and that fits around your own schedule without feeling overwhelming. If you are feeling rushed to get from one event to the next then it takes away the joy and you might miss out on valuable connections. Quality beats quantity. I personally attended 9 events over the week which I found was a good amount alongside my regular schedule.
Curious to know if you have attended Tech Week in your own city and what your experience was like?
Here are some pictures from walking between events.
Top comments (24)
Hahaha, I'm already sold with this alone. When I get the chance to get back to Manila or even abroad, I think I would attend free tech events and connect with people like you did. Thanks for the tips.
PS. Beautiful pics btw
It's definitely a great habit to pick up. Let me know how it goes Elmar.
Thanks!
I would push back slightly - ROI depends heavily on career stage. early on, the serendipity is worth it. but 5+ years deep in a niche, conference talks rarely clear your reading queue.
You need to be more selective if you are working deep in a niche, quality beats quantity. The good thing with Tech Week is that there are hundreds of events to choose from so you should find an event for your ICP. Curation is key in this case.
and the corollary is you stop feeling guilty skipping - once you have an ICP filter, 'not for me' is a complete answer
agree, that is important to not get sucked into a FOMO spiral and cut the noise to focus on the actual signals
pre-deciding what counts as a signal before FOMO kicks in is the real work. once the spiral starts, the threshold shifts. writing the filter when you are not under pressure means you do not renegotiate it in the moment.
What I find interesting is that events like Tech Week compress years of weak network connections into a few days.
You can spend months reading blogs, following people online, and commenting on posts. Or you can spend a few days meeting builders face-to-face and create relationships that would have taken much longer to form digitally.
Knowledge scales through content.
Trust scales through interaction.
Good events accelerate the second one.
Agree. I made some valuable connections in one week. In a world accelerated and misconstrued by technology, the best way to establish trust is often to meet face-to-face.
Agreed.
One thing I’ve noticed is that content creates visibility, but conversations create opportunities.
Many people focus on growing an audience. The bigger leverage often comes from building relationships with a small number of highly aligned people.
A single meaningful connection can sometimes be worth more than thousands of impressions.
Very true. The other important aspect many forget are the follow-up coffee chats to keep the connection going once the events are over.
Exactly.
The event creates the connection, but the follow-up creates the relationship. I’ve seen many people collect business cards, LinkedIn connections, or social follows and assume the networking happened. In reality, the value often starts weeks later when you continue the conversation around a shared interest, project, or problem.
Relationships compound just like knowledge does.
Sounds nice! So this is not a prototypical "tech event" hosted in one venue, but more a 'festival' kind of thing spread out over multiple locations in the city?
And do you know if they have these "Tech Weeks" in other cities?
Correct! A week long 'festival' would be a good way to describe it.
It is organized in a decentralized way where events can be independently hosted all over the city by local startups, tech firms, VCs etc.
Cool, I think I would like that more than a whole week at one venue!
The Builder’s Grid is such a smart idea because it makes networking feel more natural while also giving other builders real visibility.
It's definitely a win win for everyone involved. It was fun too to set up.
It is the best tech event in Canada. I am glad that you enjoy it, Julien! I had a blast at the Toronto Tech Week last year. I agree with you because it is a great place to network.
Thanks Ben! Hopefully we meet at next year's edition!
Thank you, man!
I completely agree. Beyond the talks and networking, Tech Week gives you something that's hard to get online: a sense of what people are actually building right now and where the industry is heading.
Very true Karina.
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