Friday, February 18, 2011

Dumbo And Union Square

Location of Manhattan on New York City.Image via WikipediaI am headed to Union Square Friday afternoon to spend a few hours with the PaperlessPost team and its fearless leader Alexa Herschfeld. I had a voice mail from her Wednesday and Google Voice had transcribed her name as Celexa Ourselves. Not good, Google Voice, not good.

And to me it is feeling like I am headed to Dumbo. Dumbo and Union Square are two places in town that have tech clusters. There are a whole bunch of tech startups congregated in those two locales.

If there are other such clusters in the city, I am not aware of them as of yet. I am surprised there are not similar clusters in Williamsburg and Chinatown. I know of at least one major tech company that is based out of Chinatown, but I don't think you would call that a cluster.

And FourSquare, the most famous name in town, is not in Union Square, although I'd say it is still walking distance.

Dumbo still stands out though. Dumbo is the number one cluster. There is a sense of community there. They do events. It feels more concentrated there. And Etsy is there.

If there is something similar going on also in the Union Square cluster in terms of community and events, I am not aware of it. Maybe they do at smaller scales, in informal ways.

And considering most tech events are in Manhattan anyways, and they are not uptown, they are not midtown, they are not downtown, you
Cover via Amazoncould argue the Union Square cluster does have a monopoly of sorts on the tech events in town.

But if you are not actively interested in the tech scene, you would not know. You would pass by Union Square, and you would not even feel it. There is so much more going on as well.
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