UPDATE 8/17/2020:
We’ve had to push our event to Nov 5 from it’s original date of Sept 10. However our COVID-19 Safety and Mitigation plan has received an “official blessing from the City of Frisco”, the finalists have booked travel, and this event WILL OCCUR IN PERSON on NOV 5, The only thing that will stop it now is a court order or legal authority. Come help us re-open the North Texas startup ecosystem by attending this CodeLaunch event and we promise we’ll be doing all the right things to mitigate any COVID-19 risk. See you at CodeLaunch! – Jason W. Taylor
Wow, what a wild ride we have all been on in 2020. Nearly everyone on earth has been facing the pandemic and all its related challenges. Here in the U.S. we also have had to face some tough questions about our policing practices and social upheaval. If that weren’t enough us Texans have fought off an oil sector crash too. It hasn’t been easy on us—we’ve had some serious headwinds in business and had to make terrible decisions we never expected to. I know the same is true for many of you.
Here at CodeLaunch HQ in Frisco, Texas, when the Pandemic hit, we tabled all focus on CodeLaunch until June 1st and kept our fingers crossed. We were hoping public sentiment and scientific reality would begin to swing in favor of a re-opening so we could have a real face-to-face CodeLaunch in September. It was blind faith at the time, but by June 1st, it seemed to me both of those variables were heading in the right direction. I began to circle back with our presenting sponsor, UNT at Frisco, as well as our other key partners and especially our host Comerica Center Arena. I expressed our intent and gathered feedback and concerns from all the parties, including our great 2020 CodeLaunch evangelist Josh Stramiello.
After a couple of weeks working out the details, I am proud to announce today that the 8th annual CodeLaunch event, presented by UNT at Frisco, is ON! Not in some virtual format either. I’m talking about attendees, judges, networking, the finalists’ competition, professional hackathon teams, and everything else that goes with CodeLaunch will be in person.
It hasn’t been lost on us or our key sponsors that some public safety mitigation is going to be necessary. We have identified a set of measures that we will take to assure the public that we are sensitive to COVID-19 concerns. We are seeking a “health safety sponsor” to help cover the costs of those measures and will be going public with all those changes soon. Our goal is to make sure everyone feels like CodeLaunch is a healthy space to be in.
Today I have a special message for those of you in our North Texas startup community. We have always been laser focused on continuing to produce this event, elevating its impact, and growing participation in CodeLaunch. This year we will prove that like no other. I hope you will join us on September 10th at the Comerica Center Arena in Frisco, TX. If it’s your first CodeLaunch, I bet you will wonder how in the world you missed the first seven! I can make you this promise: despite the challenges this event WILL BE THE BIGGEST AND BEST SO FAR!
Key Takeaways
- Register to attend here.
- Sponsorships and Exhibitors are available now, contact ideas@codeauthority.com
- Health Safety sponsorship is available now, contact ideas@codeauthority.com
If you want to find out more about CodeLaunch (guiding principles, why we do it, our past, present, and future), you can watch this Virtual Lunch and Learn I produced in early June before we knew for sure we would really have the event (yes, I had a good feeling we would). Please follow us on social media or sign up for our email blasts to keep up with us. We will be making some very exciting hackathon and sponsor announcements soon.
I hope to see you at CodeLaunch this year! Thank you, Wesley Randall and everyone else at UNT!
Stay safe all,
President & Founder, Code Authority, CodeLaunch