The Growth Of The Digital District

While the Digital District (Washington, D.C.) has a startup community that is alive and well, it's finally time that we move out to the San Francisco bay area. We began this effort by hiring a full-time writer, Raj Dash, out there a few weeks ago, but I've decided that it's time that I spend more time out West in order to accelerate our presence in the area. The Growth Of The Digital District Before moving out to San Francisco I've thought long and hard about leaving this area for any significant period of time. Just last year I was fortunate to be named in the Washingtonian as one of D.C.'s 100 "Tech Titans", however there are only so many stories we can get about the social media space while operating out of an area that is heavily focused on politics. In September of 2007 I wrote a post on "Bringing The Valley To D.C.", and at the time a community was just beginning to emerge. Working with Frank Gruber of Techcocktail, I was able to not only contribute to an awesome D.C. event which arguably filled a strong void in the market for bringing D.C.'s digital mavens together, but got the opportunity to connect with many of the district's hard working digital enthusiasts. Years later, numerous other events have emerged, like the Twin Tech event that Peter Corbett spearheaded and now him (and iStrategyLabs) and Frank (through "Shiny Heart Ventures") are putting together Digital Capital Week. We (Social Times & mediabistro.com) are even hosting an event during the week (which I will be attending). I can confidently say that the digital district now includes thousands of individuals, each of which plays a different role, and all of them will be at Digital Capital Week. In addition to witnessing a rapid expansion of the Digital District (or Digital Capital, whichever you prefer), San Francisco bay area technologists now frequent D.C. It has emerged as a leading technology hub and for that reason, I'm excited about the future of the community. However, it's time that we move on to the west coast. Hello San Francisco And Silicon Valley! Not surprisingly though, the majority of our reader base is not situated in D.C., but instead in two cities: New York and San Francisco. We have a significant reader base in other cities as well but these two continue to stand out (for obvious reasons). If you were to map out the companies that we've been covering, you'd see that many of them are located in the Western half of the United States. Also considering that close to half of our content is still focused specifically on Facebook, it has been nothing short of an immense challenge to stay on the beat while being completely disconnected from the area. As such, I am moving out there May 1st. The result will be much more event coverage, as well as many more interviews, and a couple of other projects we're working on within the company. Since Social Times Inc. was acquired back in December by WebMediaBrands (Nasdaq: WEBM), I've had a lot more support for the various areas of the business (education, content development, events, and increasingly research) and the future continues look bright. I'm hoping that moving out to San Francisco for an unknown length of time will help accelerate the company's growth. While I'll be regularly coming back to D.C. (probably at least once a month or so), there are too many opportunities for the company out West to pass up. I'll continue to come back to D.C. (and NYC) regularly but starting next month it's off to S.F.!

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The Growth Of The Digital District

Nick O'Neill

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The Growth Of The Digital District

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Nick O'Neill