NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--General Assembly (http://generalassemb.ly), a new concept in community and education around technology and design, today opened its New York campus to the public. In addition to offering a unique curriculum around technology, design and entrepreneurship, General Assembly will be home to entrepreneurs building New York-based companies, creating a vibrant community that encourages collaboration and innovation.
General Assembly’s 20,000 square foot space was designed as a campus to encourage collaborative practices and emergent learning opportunities. Located at the intersection of Broadway and 20th in Manhattan, the campus has educational, work, and communal space and includes an event space that holds 200, a classroom that holds 35, a library that holds 25, several 15-person seminar rooms, state-of-the-art media facility, two work spaces on the north and south wings of the campus, a full kitchen, bar, lockers, mailroom and bike storage area.
Education programs in technology, design and entrepreneurship begin Feb. 1. The courses represent some of the best programming in technology and design available in New York, taught by leaders in their fields. For example, General Assembly is partnering with IDEO (a global design and innovation firm known for its work across business, government, education, and social sectors), to offer courses on Design Thinking. IDEO partners with top tier academic institutions, including Stanford, where they helped found the d. school. LUXr and General Assembly are partnering to bring the regularly sold out course in Agile User Experience, which has been, to date, offered exclusively in San Francisco to New York. The program is a residency for early stage companies. Participating teams come together one day a week for 10 weeks to collaborate with design experts and each other. The course is taught by Janice Fraser, co-founder and CEO of Adaptive Path (a leading user-experience strategy and design firm that has sold products to Google and coined the term Ajax). Janice Fraser is a guest lecturer at Stanford and Haas School of Management. General Assembly will also offer an introductory course on building a web application in Python, to teach the practical basics of web development for beginners. Jeff Crouse, a Senior Fellow at Eyebeam Atelier and lecturer at Parsons, New School for Design, will teach a course which requires intermediate technical knowledge, on Augmented Reality and Computer Vision. Practical applications include touch-displays and gesture interfaces.
General Assembly has three tiers of engagement to allow access to the educational offerings and the community. The majority of people will be part of the first tier, which is open to the public and allows individuals to attend workshops and classes around design, technology, and entrepreneurship, as well as events and lectures hosted at General Assembly. The second tier, Communal members, have 24/7 access to the campus, and include serial entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of their next ventures, top-tier investors, designers and developers. The third tier are those people who, by invitation, work full time out of General Assembly. They represent some of the most promising startups in New York, and they participate in the community by teaching classes and attending events.
General Assembly has already attracted exciting names in the New York technology world as part of its inaugural class, including: Amanda Hesser (New York Times food columnist, launched T magazine); Casey Pugh (Emmy winner, early employee at Vimeo); Chris Maguire (Co-founder of Etsy); Julian Gutman/Joe West; and Zach Klein (Co-founder, Vimeo, Svpply, Busted Tees, and College Humor). Charter members include: Chris Hughes (Co-founder of Facebook); Mike Yavonditte (current CEO of Hashable); Stephen and Heidi Messer (Founders of LinkShare); and David Tisch (Director of TechStars NYC). Partners include New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), IDEO, Rackspace, Silicon Valley Bank, Skype, and Wilson Sonsini.
"The new General Assembly technology and design campus represents the latest in a series of partnerships between New York City and private sector entities to support and promote entrepreneurship,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “It will offer a variety of courses open to the public, and space and a collaborative environment for start-up businesses, providing New York City's next generation of business innovators with tools they need to transform their ideas into working ventures, while creating jobs for our economy."
“We realized that a college-like setting and campus design offers some of the best opportunities for thinking, exploring and learning; where people have the space to collaborate and the benefit of serendipitous encounters. We drew on that concept for inspiration,” said Adam Pritzker, co-founder, General Assembly. “In one day at General Assembly, someone can attend an introductory class on how to build a web application in python or HTML5, and participate in workshops on computer vision and human-centered design.”
"IDEO does a great deal of work with educational institutions and in the realm of design for learning,” said Ryan Jacoby, co-location head, IDEO New York. “We really think General Assembly's notion of an urban campus focused on technology, design and entrepreneurship is compelling and unique. Our designers are excited to be working and part of that community."
Participating startups invited to work full-time on campus include:
(Art) Artsy
Art.sy is the Pandora for the fine art world. Powered by the Art Genome Project, Art.sy is building a global high-end art marketplace, integrated with a personal recommendation engine using their proprietary artificial intelligence technology.
(Fashion) Fashism
Fashism is a crowdsourced stylist that uses social recommendations to help you navigate your wardrobe based on your personal style.
(Publishing) Newscred
NewsCred is a global content distribution platform, helping content producers generate new outlets of revenue by allowing them to syndicate content via the NewsCred API and providing publishers with an alternative source of premium, multi-platform content to reduce costs.
(Media) VHX lets users watch videos anywhere, anytime, on- or offline. Users can save videos for later to watch on their computer, smart phone, or TV.
(Finance) Profitably is building a next-gen business analytics and financial optimization software-as-a-service, with onboard tools to drive growth, optimize business operations, and manage profitability. Profitably brings together a respected tech, design and sales team, with a product that has received recent critical acclaim.
(Food) Food52
food52 is a virtual crowdsourced cookbook and recipe sharing community, bringing together food lovers and home cooks to learn from each other and share ideas, recipes and culture. Founders include former New York Times food columnist and author Amanda Hesser.
(Education) Easel
Easel is a real-time tutoring for the touch generation, combining hands-on learning applications on mobile devices with on-demand instruction from real tutors and making your textbooks come to life by partnering with content publishers.
(Entertainment) SeatGeek
SeatGeek is a ticket search engine that enables users to quickly access millions of sports and concert listings, with price forecasting.
About General Assembly
General Assembly is an urban campus for entrepreneurs seeking to transform industry and culture through technology and design. It provides programming, space, and support services to foster collaborative practices and learning opportunities.
General Assembly was founded by Adam Pritzker, Brad Hargreaves, Matthew Brimer, and Jake Schwartz . General Assembly collaborated with IDEO to develop programming and is supported by top private companies and agencies such as, Skype, Silicon Valley Bank, Rackspace, Wilson Sonsini, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation, that recognize its model is unique and meets a need in New York’s growing technology sector. For more information, please visit http://generalassemb.ly.