By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA

The busiest day in Knoxville’s “Innov865 Week” was yesterday with six events including one private one. Reports indicate that attendance was about 150 at the five public events, bringing the total participation after two days to about 675 with the two biggest events still to come.

Obviously, the big news of the day was the announcement of the new “Innovation Crossroads” initiative at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. About 30 people attended the announcement at the National Transportation Research Center.

Earlier in the day, more than 40 people turned out for the “Big Data: Big Impact Lunch and Learn” co-hosted by PYA Analytics and NewsBreak Media Networks. Bob Bradley, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NewsBreak Media, moderated a lively panel discussion featuring four individuals intimately involved in developing analytics tools and utilizing them for decision-making. They were: Brian Nelson, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer (CEO) of NewsBreak Media; Mik Bertolli, Co-Founder of Avrio Analytics; Blair Christian, PYA Analytics Lead Data Scientist; and Jian Huang, CEO of Survature.

Another three dozen people showed-up at the Casual Pint in Hardin Valley for Life Science Tennessee’s “Beer and Biotech” meet-up that featured a give-and-take discussion about entrepreneurship. Jeff Hubrig Jr. of Innovasan and Dan Close of 490 BioTech led the exchange of ideas and lessons learned.

While we were not able to attend two other events due to conflicts in schedules, we heard about 15 people participated in the “Growth Hackathon” arranged by Brandon Bruce of Cirruspath, and two dozen were pre-registered for Launch Tennessee’s “Angel Tax Credit Road Show.”

Today’s “The Works Demo Day” is expected to draw about 275 attendees, and more than 500 have pre-registered through yesterday for Thursday’s “Start-up Day.”

(Note: This article appeared previously on teknovation.biz, a web-based service that was launched to spotlight and celebrate “all things” related to technology, innovation and entrepreneurship in East Tennessee.)