Glendale gears up for Tech Week
Next week, the city of Glendale and other partners will host the first Glendale Tech Week, an event aimed at bringing together and promoting the city’s various tech firms through a series of events featuring speakers, panel discussions and site tours.
Events will start on Tuesday and conclude on Sept. 17, alongside the debut of the Open Arts and Music Festival in Central Park.
In addition to the city’s involvement, Tech Week is organized by the Glendale Economic Development Corp. — a separate nonprofit formed in 2014 to expand Glendale’s job opportunities and stimulate economic development — as well as other local institutions, including Glendale Community College, Glendale Arts, Glendale Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Glendale Assn. and real estate firm CBRE.
Among the guest speakers will be Lewis Horne, CBRE’s president of the Greater Los Angeles-Orange County region; Stu MacFarlane, executive vice president of consumer platforms for YP; Brittany Levine Beckman, associate editor with Mashable; Dr. Manuel Momjian, a local physician; and Tamar Sadd, economic development coordinator for the city of Glendale.
CBRE, which moved its Los Angeles north regional office from Universal City to the historic Masonic Temple in downtown Glendale earlier this year, will host a kickoff event from 5 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
Tech Week will also include tours of CBRE’s creative office space, which features an open-seating plan with no assigned work desks.
David Josker, managing director for CBRE’s Los Angeles north office, said he appreciated the help his company received from Glendale city officials during its move and said his firm is excited to be a focus of Tech Week.
“Glendale is a budding environment for tech professionals and their firms,” he said. “Glendale Tech Week is our opportunity to collaborate with leading-edge firms and share the great experience we’ve had in this city.”
Tech Week was created following approval by the City Council for a study of the city’s tech industry in February. The nearly $50,000 survey by Los Angeles-based Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors is assessing Glendale’s current status in the tech industry, as well as drafting a development plan for the industry’s future success in the city.
Jennifer McLain, principal economic development officer for the city, said preliminary results point to an already thriving tech economy, with an estimated 1,000 firms based in the city that provide 41,000 jobs. Many are based along Brand Boulevard, the San Fernando corridor and in Montrose.
Notable companies include YP, which produces the Yellow Pages, and LegalZoom.
Those kinds of firms provide “great-paying jobs,” McLain said. “We want more of those.”
For ticket information and a schedule of events, visit glendaletechweek.com.
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Bradley Zint, bradley.zint@latimes.com
Twitter: @BradleyZint
