What is Vancouver Tech Week?

Vancouver Tech Week (VTW) is a week-long set of events that celebrates builders and hackers within Vancouver’s tech industry. It features a core set of events (such as our mini hackathon) that will anchor our organization, while opening ourselves up to other tech communities to host builder/hack-focused events with us together to celebrate the city’s vibrant and growing tech industry (and to accelerate it further!).

Why are we hosting this week-long thing?

While Vancouver’s been known to have a decent tech scene, onlookers across the world glance at Toronto/Waterloo as the main tech hub of Canada. We have startups, founders, developers, product managers, designers, and other adjacent techies, but we don’t have a week-long event to truly bring actual builders together to share knowledge, learn, and connect. In terms of technical talks, builder events, and networking opportunities for technical folks, we’re somewhat fragmented.

Thus, we’re hosting Vancouver Tech Week to serve the purpose of changing that outlook and to bring Vancouver to the global stage, filled with smart, technology-focused innovators. It’s a week to celebrate our growing tech industry, and to truly bring actual builders and technical people together to solidify our community.

What is our goal?

Our goal is simple: use Vancouver Tech Week as a platform for many of Vancouver’s tech builders and hackers to come together and celebrate and grow Vancouver as a leading tech hub, driving energy within Vancouver’s tech industry and to elevate those who are building software to really give them an opportunity to shine.

How do I get involved?

There are 3 ways for you to get involved:

1) Hosting an event with us!

Our criteria for hosting events with us is simple:

• Rule #1: Your event must be focused on technical discussions, product development, or tech growth/learning that will help your audience grow their technical careers.
• Rule #2: Your event should not promote itself to sales/consultant people who attend with the aim of promoting their business/consultancy. The reason why we have this rule in place is simply because we want people to come with the goal of learning how to build technical products. To learn and grow as techies.
• Rule #3: The events should be welcoming to all, non-discriminatory, and not-for-profit (you may only charge to cover costs). This is because Vancouver Tech Week in general is a non-profit community. We operate with the inherent value of it.
• Rule #4:  Set up an event registration page with Vancouver Tech Week as a co-host. Please note that your event will NOT be approved for the official Tech Week calendar until these requirements are completed. If your event will be “Invite Only” without a public event page, please note this in your submission where we request the URL.
• Logistical Criteria to meet:
  • Your event must be at least 1-2 hours long and should not last longer than a whole day.
  • You must have a venue ready to host your event.
  • You must (if you need it) have volunteers ready to help you host your event.

<aside> <img src="/icons/document_orange.svg" alt="/icons/document_orange.svg" width="40px" /> Submit your event proposal to us via the Event Registration form.

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To ensure your event is included in the official Tech Week calendar, please include the following statement in your event details:

"This event is a part of Vancouver Tech Week (https://lu.ma/vantechweek) - a week of events that celebrate builders and hackers within Vancouver’s tech industry, built by the community, for the community."