I’m sure you’ll be aware that the Turing Festival is running from 23rd to the 25th of August this year and the organisers have announced an awesome line up including headliner Steve Wozniak. There are top events throughout the festival including, CEO to CEO, MusicHack and a Startup Pitch Clinic. However one of the best elements of TuringFestival is one you may not be aware of – Turing Town.
Turing Town uses incredibly low-tech methods to match Edinburgh-based hosts with Turing Festival guests (startups and entrepreneurs who want to come to Edinburgh for the Turing Festival). Turing Town is the brainchild of Hilary Singer Roberts of StartupCafe. The aim of Turing Town is to enable as many startups to visit Edinburgh during the Turing Festival by eliminating the cost of accommodation and to allow guest startups to interact with and get to know locals. Personally I think its a great idea as two of the biggest hurdles facing guests to Turing Festival are finding cheap accommodation (especially during the Festival) and coming to a strange city where they don’t know anyone.
If if you have the ability to host a guest startup you will not only get to know an awesome visiting startup pretty well but you also get free entry to see Steve Wozniak on the opening day of the Turing Festival (Thursday 23rd of August). The process to apply to be a host is quite simple and you need only fill out a short form found on the Turing Town site.
Likewise if you are from out with commuting distance to Edinburgh you can apply to be a guest and get free accommodation for Turing Town. Free accommodation aside you will have a lovely host who will have local knowledge and is already part of the local startup scene. Get signed up to Turing Town then get signed up to some Turing Festival events.
Turing Town is a home-grown community movement which I think is excellent. Hopefully see more of the same with future events, it’s certainly something Startup Weekend Glasgow would have benefited from.
