It’s one thing to put on a regional event, but what about an event where you take over an entire region? This approach, called a decentralized event, isn’t unheard of in the event world, but is having a moment thanks to the rise of regional tech weeks. There isn’t one main venue for these events, but rather a number of small ones built around a specific theme.
Deep Tech Week, which started in San Francisco in 2024, is taking things a step further by expanding out into a roadshow-style global conference series that’s hitting seven cities in 2026 alone. (Its last meeting, held in Berlin, took place in mid-May.) Andrew Cote, a nuclear fusion engineer with a sizable X following, built the concept to help support highly technical fields that might not be getting the attention of AI these days.
The scale is sizable: The New York edition, which took place March 30 to April 3, had nearly 4,500 attendees across 50 events. That’s despite not having a traditional event pro at the helm: Cote, who says he’s invested $300,000 into building the concept, makes clear that he’s something of a committed community organizer in a niche universe.
That gives him a different calculus and mindset than your average event planner—one focused on actually being part of his community, rather than simply marketing to it.
“If you have to make events be a business unto itself, it's very difficult to keep it authentic, because you have to sell out,” he says.
His role with Deep Tech Week is something of high-level mastermind who sets the framework, lets the speakers shine, then gets out of the way. He helps organize a few anchor events, but the regional events are built to be volunteer-driven—and presenter-focused.
“I will do my best to make you famous,” he says.
Deep Tech Week hits its next stop, Seattle, during the week of June 8.
Above: A scene from the 2025 San Francisco edition of Deep Tech Week.
• May/June 2026
