Notre Dame IDEA Week extending its reach to Indianapolis this year

IDEA Week, an annual innovation festival in the South Bend/Elkhart region, is working with tech advocacy group TechPoint this year to extend the festival’s reach into Indianapolis.

Ting Gootee, CEO of Indianapolis-based TechPoint, described the move as a “co-marketing” strategy that can help promote both TechPoint and IDEA Week to new audiences.

IDEA Week, which takes place April 20-26, is presented by the University of Notre Dame along with various community organizations and businesses. The week, which includes workshops, talks, concerts and other activities, takes place at multiple venues in the South Bend/Elkhart region. The festival is open to the public, and, with a few exceptions, activities are free.

(IDEA Week was created in 2017, the same year that Notre Dame launched its IDEA Center, which serves as an entrepreneurial hub for the university. IDEA stands for “innovation, de-risking and enterprise acceleration.”)

South Bend Elkhart Regional Partnership CEO Bethany Hartley, who has been involved with IDEA Week since its inception in 2017, described the festival as a much smaller version of the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

“It’s a blend of learning and networking and then these kinds of cultural, artistic, creative arts channels as well,” Hartley said. “The goal is to really bring people together over the course of a few days around entrepreneurship and innovation in all facets.”

This year’s IDEA Week roster includes presentations and panel discussions on topics including venture capital, workforce development and business startups, along with a pitch competition and other events.

Ticketed performances this year include an April 20 concert by the alt-rock band All American Rejects, an April 25 performance by comedian Hasan Minhaj and an April 26 event featuring Nashville songwriters.

Including the panel discussions, presentations and ticketed shows, Hartley said, IDEA Week usually draws about 10,000 attendees, mostly from the surrounding South Bend/Elkhart region.

In an effort to build stronger connections between South Bend/Elkhart and Indianapolis, some Indianapolis events during the week of April 20-26 will carry the IDEA Week branding.

TechPoint and IDEA Week tested the waters last year by including the Mira Awards as an official festival event.

This year, TechPoint says, the branding effort will expand to multiple Indianapolis events. They include an April 20 artificial intelligence hackathon at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at IUPUI; an Indiana Founders Network breakfast on April 25; TechPoint’s Mira Awards gala on April 26; and five other events, with potentially others to come.

Extending the IDEA Week brand into Indianapolis is a deliberate move to help connect South Bend and Elkhart-area entrepreneurs with the resources that Indianapolis has to offer, Hartley said. “The more we can deepen those ties [between the two regions], we believe we’re doing the right thing by our entrepreneurs.”

TechPoint exists to promote the tech sector throughout Indiana, and over the past year or two it has been making a deliberate attempt to establish a stronger presence outside of the Indianapolis metro area.

All the Indianapolis events are pre-existing events—not new events created just for IDEA Week, TechPoint CEO Gootee said.

This approach—bringing pre-existing community events under the IDEA Week umbrella—fits in well with the festival’s overall approach, Hartley said.

Typically, Hartley said, about 80% of IDEA Week activities are specifically created for the festival. The other 20% are community events that IDEA Week planners have agreed to promote as part of the festival’s lineup.

Bringing community events into the schedule, Hartley said, helps create a more robust festival lineup while potentially boosting participation in those offerings. “This is really a great platform to draw more participants into these events.”