This article was written by Alex Taylor, Senior Business Development Manager for Arlington Economic Development.
The Collision conference is one of North America’s fastest growing technology conferences, featuring hundreds of early-stage companies and over one-thousand investors.
The conference historically connects those early-stage, fast-growing companies to the capital and resources needed to accelerate growth and succeed in innovative sectors like AI, Cybersecurity and Fintech.
Arlington Economic Development (AED) attended Collision the last four years and brought a handful of Arlington’s most innovative companies to showcase the community’s growing tech economy. In “normal” times, promoting Arlington and its companies to a global audience through conferences and tradeshows was essential to attracting fast-growing companies and creating investment opportunities for Arlington’s existing companies.
Now, in these not-so-normal times, promotional opportunities benefitting our companies are going to be critical in stabilizing our economy and ensuring that our tech sector continues its growth in the face of historic economic challenges.
This year, Collision was scheduled to be held in Toronto, but due to COVID-19 the conference, “Collision from Home” was moved online for the first time. AED partnered with our neighboring regional economic development offices to adapt to the virtual format consisting of a three-day event beginning on June 23.
Arlington will “bring” three companies as part of the Northern Virginia cohort that includes Fairfax and Prince Williams Counties and the City of Alexandria. Arlington cybersecurity firms, Fend and HyperQube and training company, NextUp Solutions, will join hundreds of other like-minded companies taking advantage of the virtual format to make connections, meet investors and learn from some of the world’s top thought leaders.
With a growing private sector bolstering our federal government anchors, the Arlington economy is faring better than many, but we cannot rest on our laurels. Arlington must take advantage of new and innovative ways to market our community as a place to do businesses and ensure that our companies are primed to accelerate their growth as we move into a post-COVID recovery phase.
The Collision from Home conference will feature intimate face-to-face meetings, custom group discussion lounges, one-on-one investor meetings, company pitches, as well as hundreds of panels and discussions for attendees to digest.
To follow along as AED, Fend Tech, HyperQube and NextUp Solutions tackle the Collision from Home conference this week, check out @AEDBizInvest on Twitter.