Building Community on a Continental Scale
Next week, the WTIA will host the annual Technology Councils of North America (TECNA) conference. This three-day conference brings together tech trade associations from the U.S., Canada and Mexico to discuss key issues in growing and supporting the tech industry in our respective regions.
Hosting this annual conference is a big deal on several fronts. This is the first time the WTIA has produced a multiple day conference and it’s the first conference we’ve done for an audience spanning all of North America, and we have taken a leadership role, becoming fully engaged in a larger community of organizations like ours. For TECNA, this is the first time they’ve taken the conference to the West Coast. It’s also set a record for highest attendance registration and for largest sponsorship support. We’re pretty excited!
This event provides great visibility for Puget Sound’s tech sector, and for the WTIA as a significant contributor to the large community of tech trade associations that support the tech industry throughout North America. More than 40 organizations from cities including Boston, Austin, NYC, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Chicago, Ottawa and Portland are bringing their leadership teams to Seattle to convene around best practices for transforming the 21st century tech trade association.The insights gained from our involvement in TECNA are invaluable, and help us to better serve our members. We will hear first-hand about what innovations happening in other technology hubs, including new types and topics for events, workforce development solutions and public policy advocacy.
We do not get paid to host TECNA’s annual conference. We are using it as an opportunity to show off the incredible riches in tech, talent, innovation and natural beauty we all live with every day. And we’ve crafted an agenda of the topics most important to our industry that will facilitate learning from our peers in a live, interactive setting — a pretty fair trade at the end of the day.
If you find it hard to reach us August 8th – 10th we’ll be at the Olive8 with a group that’s very interested in seeing how we do things here. Thanks to everyone, and every company, that has supported us in bringing this conference to Seattle.
Susan
