Austin has a rich history of entrepreneurship, with national successes like Whole Food and Dell. However, it's only in recent years that we've developed a thriving entrepreneurship scene, having been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine, as a Top-10 City for Entrepreneurship and ranked #1 for Small Business by Portfolio.com.
What has brought this about? The individual efforts of numerous passionate individuals, organizations and communities, as seen in the following Entrepreneurship Scene Map. Four years ago I voiced a desire that our scene would "come together;" little did I realize how far we would travel! As Roy noted in his 2010 welcome blogpost, it was that year that the first RISE Austin occurred. It has since evolved into THE galvanizing event for the entire entrepreneurship scene, in the same way that SXSW has for music, film and interactive.
Not only is RISE a perfect moment to bring the entrepreneurship scene together, it also shows us where to focus our attention in 2010: collaborate at the scene level. This is first accomplished by taking a scene-consciousness - thinking about our activities and organizations as part of the larger scene. Second, we must increase collaboration across the scene - how can our communities leverage each other's strengths and create more capacity? Third, we must evangelize our scene, not just its individual parts. At the ATX Equation Session we will discuss how to steward Austin's Entrepreneurship Scene in 2010.
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