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Portland's biggest and most exciting tech and startup conference is back—and, as they say, bigger and better than ever. TechfestNW 2017 is coming to the Portland Art Museum on March 23-24.
TechFestNW is a gathering of leading thinkers, startups and established companies that has showcased the the Pacific Northwest's talent and innovation for the past five years.
This year's just-launched website is here.
This year at TechfestNW, the focus on the Pacific Northwest's homegrown talent will remain strong. But in 2017, TechfestNW will go global—bringing in international innovators from as near as Canada and as far away as Hong Kong.
As in previous years, TechfestNW will bring speakers from all across technology and innovation fields, from the head of Nike's global digital innovation department bringing cutting-edge technology to athletic-wear across the world to Stanford University futurist and artificial intelligence expert Jerry Kaplan to the founder of fast-expanding vacation-rental site Vacasa.
PitchfestNW will also be back—linking up entrepreneurs looking to make their own bold ideas into viable companies with investors from around the world. If you want to pitch your idea to venture capitalists at PitchfestNW, apply here.
For the third year in a row, TechfestNW needs to expand to a larger venue. In 2017, TechfestNW will move into the Portland Art Museum.
The new locale in the Portland Art Museum also means that the mission of TechfestNW will broaden to include not just innovative technologies but the stories that surround it.
TechfestNW is also excited to host famed Portland filmmaker Gus Vant Sant.
Attendees will also get to hear from the New York Times' tech reporter Nicole Perlroth, whose most recent high-profile pieces covered the international hacking scandals that have shaped our most recent elections, as well as writer and Carnegie Mellon-trained roboticist Daniel Wilson, whose novel Robopocalypse was optioned by Steven Spielberg.
And in a state that just legalized cannabis—and inaugurated cannabis as one of the main grounds for innovation—TechfestNW will also bring in one of the most important minds working in cannabis today, Jeremy Plumb, who plans to use science, medicine and state-of-the-art tech to revolutionize how we think about cannabis.
Attendees will get to check out new technology before it’s available at TechfestNW’s Demo Alley—as well as simply check out the city of Portland. TechfestNW will offer a number of Portland exploration meetups throughout town.
So mark your calendars. Buy your tickets. Ready your self-driving car.
Willamette Week