Thursday, 8/13, is the day when we celebrate the techies and tech companies in the 813 area code: 813 Tech Day!
We recently celebrated the 727 area code, which covers Clearwater and St. Pete with a one-day, multi-event celebration of the area tech community, and on August 13th, we’re doing it again for the Tampa side of Tampa Bay. It’s being put together by the good people behind Tampa Bay Tech Week (with HyLo Innovation and W3RTech).
Are you in or near the 813 area code? Do you build systems or software for a living, or do you want to? Then you’ll want to mark Thursday, August 13 on your schedule and free it up for 813 Tech Day.
The essentials
- When: Thursday, August 13, 2026
- Where: Tampa. It’s a venue-hop (details below)!
- Cost: Register on Luma → https://luma.com/rf58ieh3
- Vibe: Panels, hands-on workshops, a lot of open networking, and an evening that keeps going
813 Tech Day happens in different places at different times!
813 Tech Day moves around Tampa, and it’s both a feature that lets you see places you might not have seen before and a way for you to get your steps in:
- Look, I’m a night owl and a musician, so I’m not likely to be at the Sweat in the City workout event at the start of the day (I tend to work out after my 10 a.m. standup with my NetFoundry teammates). But if you like early morning workouts and want to do one with the Tampa tech scene, go!
- Many sessions in the first half of the day happens at Cres Community in the Wellswood area (Rome Ave., south of Hillsborough), a very comfy-looking business event space.
- There’s also a big morning session at Hotel Haya in Ybor City, where the 813 Tech Day AI Meetup & Co-working event will take place. I’ll be there.
- Then, in the afternoon, the sessions move from Cres Community to Hotel Haya.
- Finally, in the evening, things get social at The Sapphire Tampa.
Why go?
Because this is basically a hometown game. 813 Tech Day crams the whole spread of Tampa Bay tech into one day and three venues, and the afternoon block at Hotel Haya is the real flex: cybersecurity in fintech, telecom/IT infrastructure resilience, and manufacturing workforce AI, back to back to back. Fortifying the Digital Frontier and Hyper-Connected Tampa are exactly the kind of conversations I show up for uninvited (don’t worry; I was invited). Zero-trust networking and infrastructure that doesn’t fall over are, not coincidentally, my day job.
The morning’s no slouch either. At Cres Community, there’ll be an AI-and-workforce panel, a founder mental health session that more conferences should be brave enough to program, and a healthtech partnerships talk that’ll be catnip if you’re anywhere near that space. If you like things more freeform, the 813 AI Meetup and Coworking event is happening at Hotel Haya, where I’ll be.
813 Tech Day wraps up at a place I’ve been meaning to check out: The Sapphire Tampa (a pretty stylin’ looking place in an unexpected location on Boy Scout Road) for a networking happy hour and a closing night that, judging by past Tech Week events, does not believe in winding down early.
I’ll be around all day; come say hi! I’m the one with the accordion energy and strong opinions about cybersecurity, AI, zero-trust networking, and the future of computing.
Grab your spot: luma.com/rf58ieh3. For more info, check out 813techday.com.
See you in the 813!