5 Highlights of the Atlanta Technology Community

With the Atlanta TechCrunch meetup next week on July 9th at Sweetwater Brewery, it’s a good time to talk about five highlights of the Atlanta technology community. The technology community has improved tremendously over the 10 years that I’ve been here, with social media and general maturation being a big part of it.

With social media, especially Twitter, ideas spread faster and conversations are public. Several years ago the Atlanta technology community had more of an old boys network feel where it mattered who you knew and introductions were critical. Now, events like Startup Riot bring together hundreds of people on a regular basis and the hot startups are highlighted at the event as well as over Twitter, where the community participates.

Here are five highlights of the Atlanta technology community:

• ATDC – the oldest and most prestigious publicly funded technology incubator that supports over 400 startups
• Flashpoint – startup engineering accelerator sponsored by Georgia Tech that takes teams through a 90 day program
• Atlanta Technology Angels – member-lead organization that is actively doing seed stage and early stage deals
• Venture Atlanta / Startup Riot – Venture Atlanta is the largest annual venture conference in the Southeast and Startup Riot is the largest annual seed stage startup conference in the Southeast
• Georgia Tech – the largest engineering school in the country, based on number of engineering graduates per year, and in the top five academically

As of July 4th, 2012, 778 people are signed up for the Atlanta TechCrunch meetup. Think about that for a second — there’s a good chance 1,000 people will sign up for a single tech startup event in Atlanta. Impressive! There are fewer than a dozen cities in the United States that would have that kind of volume for a tech startup event.

The Atlanta technology community has made amazing progress in the past 10 years, and still has a ways to go. Things like anchor billion dollar technology companies, more risk-loving seed stage capital, and many more success stories will help Atlanta get to the next level. Thankfully, a strong foundation is already in place and getting better every day.

What else? What are some other highlights of the Atlanta technology community?