Wichita’s techies and techie-wannabes invited to party tonight

If you want to know who and what’s happening in Wichita’s budding tech scene, here’s a terrific chance.

The first ever Third Thursday will be from 5 to 7 p.m. tonight, Sept. 18, at Public at the Brickyard, 129 N. Rock Island, in Old Town.

The idea is to bring together as wide a range of Wichita’s tech community as possible, programmers, designers, entrepreneurs, bankers, lawyers, investors or, really, anybody with an interest in where technology and business cross paths. As an added bonus, event sponsors have thrown in a variety of free food, drinks and prizes to some of the attendees.

And, while there, organizers of Wichita’s year-old Startup Weekend will announce something new and different for their event: worldwide competition.

Startup Weekend is a three-day gathering for teams of local techies to invent their own companies, starting with a business idea and ending the weekend with a product, a marketing plan and a business strategy. It gives competitors practice in developing a technology business, but it also introduces people with similar interests and skills.

A winner has been named in past Startup Weekends over the last year, but this time, the local Startup Weekend is tied into the UP Global network of similar events going on internationally. The winners go on to compete against other cities.

“It will be a good thing for sure, for the individual comeptitors, but it’s also a good thing for Wichita,” said event organizer Kenton Hansen. “We’re playing with other cities our size and this in an opportunity for them to hear about us and what we’re doing. It’s a chance to move further up the bell curve, not be so far behind.”

The Startup Weekend competition will be Nov. 14-16 at the Labor Party, an office building at 216 N. Mosley in Old Town.

This story was originally published September 18, 2014 at 8:09 AM with the headline "Wichita’s techies and techie-wannabes invited to party tonight."