Upcoming changes for Station F events in 2019

Picnics, conferences, workshops, dinner parties, meet-ups…there are literally hundreds of different events that take place at Station F every month. But we are going to be making some changes to our events this year — in terms of format, audience, criteria and more. Here is a look at what to expect.

More events open to the public.

We mentioned in a previous post that one of the big changes we wanted to make in 2019 was to have more campus openness — and part of this means opening up more of our events to the public. We already host *tons* of events open to the public (all public events can be found here on our website), including Discover a Startup (every Monday), all Station F “Ask me Anything” and “Deep Dive” sessions, daily public visits (sign-up here) and more. In addition, several of our campus partners host daily or weekly workshops open to the public, including Google, La French Tech and TechShop.

But we have decided to add even more events open to the public in 2019. First, we have decided to open our monthly “Big Awkward Picnic” to the public — which means now anyone can come picnic on campus. The picnic takes place in the Share Zone and requires you to sign-up online via our events page.

We have also decided that every month we will open up one of our campus workshops — previously only available for residents — to the public. These are workshops organized and hosted by our campus partners, including Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, HEC and more. Again, the event requires that you sign-up online via our events page.

And there will other events we will announce and open up to the public later this year.

New events formats

We’ll also be launching a few new event formats. First, we’ll be building on our previous events to host monthly panel discussions with leaders in various fields. Our “Deep Dive” series (open to the public) will host speakers with job-related expertise (for example, HR, Product, etc.). Our “Tech Trendz” series (also open to the public) will feature speakers with industry-related expertise (for example, blockchain, flying cars, etc.). And finally, our “How to” series (also open to the public) will feature experts on how to do something very specific (for example, how to launch a direct-to-consumer brand). Please keep an eye on our events page and newsletter for more info.

Now, one of the newer formats we’re launching this year is Station F Dinners. This is a dinner series whereby we bring together some of our leading startups to meet with investors, partners and other members of our community.

And finally, we’ll be launching campus meet-ups organized by our very own residents. Every 2 weeks, we provide a space for free to someone from the Station F community to organize a meet-up open to residents and the public. Again, all information will be available on our events page.

Values matter — even in events.

Perhaps the biggest change we are making to our events this year is with regards to our values. As many of you know, at Station F we care a lot about 2 things: startups and diversity. Therefore, we expect all events at Station F — whether organized by us or by a partner — to also respect and contribute to our values.

As a result, all events that we host at Station F must now meet the following criteria:

1. Include women in their content — we no longer accept events with all male panels and we push all events organizers to strive for 50% of their speakers to be female. We realize that this may be difficult so in some select situations we can make exceptions (note that we are unlikely to accept anything lower than 30%). But we are also here to help events that need help integrating more women speakers.
2. Include Station F startups in their content — we’d like all events that take place on campus to contribute in some way to the life of our startups. Including Station F startups in their content provides them with visibility and support. Naturally, we will help events organizers with this.
3. Have startup content — this was already the case but all events that take place at Station F must be events with startup content. Our space is limited and our demand is high, therefore we prefer to host events that provide a content that is likely to interest our community.
4. Be open to our community — all events that we host at Station F must be open to the entire Station F community. For this reason, we don’t host private company seminars, for example.
5. Contribute or support diversity and tech for good — we’d like to see everyone pushing the discussion on diversity and tech for good forward. Therefore, every event we host on campus must in some way integrate or contribute to diversity or tech for good. We are here to help, of course.

We’ll be announcing additional changes to our events in the upcoming months — and a lot of these changes are in response to feedback we had from our community, the ecosystem and other visitors (thank you!). If it isn’t already clear, we’re looking forward to welcoming many more people to Station F this year :)