May 27, 2014

On Saturday, August 23rd, 2014, at 3 p.m., AlligatorZone will hold a West Coast session in Sunnyvale Public Library in California.  RSVP: http://bit.ly/1pv78Ql

We at SiliconGlades are delighted to announce that Sunnyvale Public Library will hold a session of AlligatorZone, a free community gathering of members of the public aimed at entrepreneurs to seek perspectives from an audience that will help them identify the proverbial alligators that can hurt them and provide constructive feedback and input.

The 60,000 square feet Sunnyvale Public Library will feature the first west coast session of Alligator Zone on Saturday, August 23rd, 2014 at 3 p.m. The library, originally the Reading Room, which opened in 1908, was passed over to the town to form the Sunnyvale Public Library, which became part of the county library system in 1917.

AlligatorZone, as the name suggests, is a program conceived by @siliconglades in Tampa Bay, Florida.  There’s a previous blog post that describes the philosophy behind AlligatorZone. Here’s a link: http://magazine.siliconglades.com/post/84618739102/why-alligator-zone-why-tampa-bay-area

This particular session of AlligatorZone will feature area-entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, who will present their offerings to members of the public and engage them in conversations for direct feedback and suggestions.  The session will be steered by Librarian Liz Hickok, who kindly provided a tour of the library meeting room.

We discussed seating arrangements. The goal is to minimize or eliminate any perceived distance between the entrepreneur and the audience, so we have planned a layout and will choreograph it somewhat like a town-hall meeting.

Alligator Zone is open to all members of the public.  We know about entire families, including elementary school children who are into reality TV shows that feature entrepreneurs.  Our hope is that such families will take advantage of this town-hall meeting kind of event and gather with other entrepreneurial like-minded people to check out local startups.  Of course, rules that apply for story-time about being considerate to others would apply to the Alligator Zone session as well!

Storytime-rules will also apply to the family-friendly AlligatorZone sessions to be held at the Sunnyvale Public Library to provide as a public focus group to area entrepreneurs.

The Sunnyvale Public Library serves close to 100,000 members of the community.  Sunnyvale, being in the Silicon Valley has a heavy concentration of startups.  Feelers put out to startups have been met with enthusiastic responses.  If you are interested in presenting at AlligatorZone, please send an email to events [at] siliconglades [dot] com with a one-line summary of your product or offering.

Sunnyvale Public Library’s Patent, Business, and Finance Librarian, Liz Hickok (bio) has kindly offered to facilitate the first session of Alligator Zone at the library.

Sunnyvale Public Library’s Patent, Business, and Finance Librarian Liz Hickok, who has kindly offered to facilitate the AlligatorZone session, pointed to us during our tour of the facility, a crowded push-pin map of the world, marking countries from which patrons of the library hail.

For the debut session of Alligator Zone at Sunnyvale Public Library, the featured startups include:

If you are in Sunnyvale, California, we hope to see you at AlligatorZone.  AlligatorZone is currently scheduled in Tampa Bay Area and Sunnyvale in the Bay Area.  For a running schedule of other AlligatorZone sessions, please visit (and bookmark) AlligatorZone.eventbrite.com.  If you are an entrepreneur and wish to present your startup at AlligatorZone, please send an email to events [at] siliconglades [ dot ] com with a one-line description of your startup.