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Harlem Tech Conference Aims to Bring Silicon Alley Uptown

By Gustavo Solis | October 16, 2014 6:04pm
  In what organizers dubbed the comprehensive technology conference in Harlem, policy experts, entrepreneurs, business owners, bank executives, students, artists and community advocated gathered to talk about the role of technology in Harlem.
Silicon Harlem Tech Conference
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HARLEM — City College engineering student Ivan Estevez invented a set of headlights for skateboards, but he needed some advice for getting his product off the ground.

That's why he joined hundreds of policy experts, entrepreneurs, business owners, bank executives, students and artists Thursday for Silicon Harlem, the most comprehensive technology conference in the neighborhood.

“It’s been great,” Estevez said. “A lot of people have been giving me advice.”

The topics at nine different panels ranged from broadband infrastructure to technology in the health industry. Many of them addressed issues specific to Harlem, like how local startups can secure funding.

“The goal is to galvanize the community on how to embrace technology,” said Clayton Banks, one of the founders of Silicon Harlem, who organized the tech conference.

While the conference, which cost $150 to attend, didn't provide all of the answers to Harlem's technology questions, it got people thinking about different ways to solve them.

“There’s a gap in our community to get access to capital,” said Niles Steart of Carver Federal Savings Bank.

Because lenders prefer to invest in companies that are a few years old, it is very difficult for startups to secure funds, he added.

If you are starting out, it is very important to direct whatever money you do have toward your product, said panelist Barbara Chang, CEO of Code to Work, a nonprofit that promotes diversity in the tech industry.

When Chang started her first nonprofit, she did not take a salary and met at local coffee shops to cut costs. The most important thing is to show people how passionate you are about you businesses, she said.

Nobody is going to invest in something if the founder isn’t 100 percent behind it, she added.

“There’s a lot of diversity in the panels,” said Lane Zimmerman, who works for the Harvard Business School Alumni Angels, an organization that funds businesses. “I went to the social media panel. It had two professionals and a market analyst, people with different perspectives.”

Zimmerman recently started managing social media accounts at work and said he learned how to develop a strategy.

Others, like Charles King, went to the conference to learn some of the basics, like broadband. King, who works in the coffee industry, was skeptical of computers but has started learning about them to be more successful, he said.

“I wasn’t a tech person but I’m learning every day,” he said. 

The ultimate goal of the tech conference was to turn Harlem into a nationwide tech hub by developing innovators and attracting new companies, Banks said.

"By having a tech hub we can address issues of high crime, low unemployment and diversity in the tech industry," he said. "If we have tech companies in the neighborhood, they will hire people from the neighborhood."

That starts with getting people thinking about how to embrace new technologies, he added.