Eastern North Carolina’s Innovation Hub
Upcoming Events
Gig East is Wilson’s home for technology and innovation networking. We bring the Research Triangle and Eastern North Carolina together to encourage entrepreneurial and community success and explore next generation technology.
Need private office space?
Join Our Community
A cross pollination of great minds from many industries fosters community and breeds innovation. This belief is baked into our DNA. Becoming a member of Gig East is about much more than finding a cool new place to work. It’s a call to innovation and community. Just ask our individual and corporate members like WRAL Digital Solutions and the amazing IoT companies taking part in the City of Wilson’s cohort of the R!OT Accelerator Program.
Coworking, Acceleration, & So Much More
Membership in the Gig East Exchange is membership in a community of some of the most innovative entrepreneurs, mentors, funders, and companies in Eastern North Carolina.
We serve entrepreneurs and entrepreneurially-minded people from the inception of a great idea throughout their journey.
Inclusive &
Welcoming Team
The Gig East team is friendly, experienced, and empathetic to the needs of entrepreneurs and anyone who possesses an entrepreneurial spirit.
Networked
for Success
Gig East is Wilson’s home for technology and innovation networking. Our events focus around gigs – whether its conversation around our gigabit network, Greenlight, or creative conversations inspired by the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park. We bring eastern North Carolina together to explore next generation technology.
Community Events That Make
It Clear: You belong here!
The Gig East Exchange is both a physical space and gatherings, intended to give people a chance to ideate, collaborate, and create.
Proximity to
Acceleration
RIoT, the North Carolina-based economic development nonprofit, works with early stage startups into their fourth cohort of the RIoT Accelerator Program (RAP), which launched in Wilson, NC in early 2020.
Innovation Is In Our DNA
Wilson truly has both a small town feel and smart city amenities. A City initiative, the Gig East Exchange fuels the future of technology and innovation by encouraging growth in our local ecosystem that transcend the agricultural industry, the one-time backbone of the Eastern North Carolina economy. With the Gig East Exchange, barriers will continue to be broken and innovators will find a new home in Wilson.
Key to our barrier-breaking strategy and entrepreneurial success is the City’s Gigabit internet — Greenlight — the first of its kind in North Carolina. The Greenlight network is the fastest in the state and ensure that your internet connection isn’t the weak link in your innovation strategy.
Meet the Community
The most powerful reason to believe in the Gig East Exchange is our member community. Membership in the Gig East Exchange is membership in the most important “social network” you’ll ever join. Our members are collaborators at heart and help one another succeed.
- Transportation
- Government and Military
- Artificial Intelligence
- Digital Health
- Marketplaces
- Big Data
- Education Technology
- Virtual Reality
- and more…
Gig East and the Upper Coastal Plain Council of Governments are both working to improve the business climate for technology based employers in the Wilson area. We are working together to incubate new businesses, grow talent pipelines, and expand access to resources that will help the technology sector thrive.
The Upper Coastal Plain Council of Governments will coordinate with Gig East to build the talent pipeline needed to support local technology sector, and develop an innovative career exploration program to help youth connect with employers in the Wilson area.
We believe in the revival of once great rural communities. We believe healthy economic development balances between attracting large companies to a region, but also enabling small firms to get started and grow. Work space and access to community are vital for small firms just starting out, and Gig East serves that purpose. We are particularly pleased that the RIoT Accelerator Program, which has given us such an important boost, was able to run at Gig East.
We got to know Wilson first as a customer, and along the way made friends with the wonderful people working in economic development projects. It’s a connection that goes beyond the pragmatic, we just feel connected. Although Jim Gray, our CEO, grew up in Portsmouth Virginia, his parents and extended family are all from rural communities in Eastern North Carolina, so this is his ancestral home.
We hope to continue to serve the City of Wilson as a client, and to grow there. As our firm, and Gig East develop, we hope to collaborate to mutual benefit. There is much potential to be tapped in the area, and these are still early days.
- Help Wilson become a model smart city
- We’re still interested in the idea of showcasing environmental technology
- Speak with new startup founders, share what we have learned on our journey
WebHearing (an early startup firm) was part of the 2020 RIoT accelerator program in Wilson. The experience with RIoT and Gig East was extremely helpful in building a comprehensive business and technology plan in a welcoming and stimulating atmosphere.
In addition to the great people at RIoT, Darren Smith of Gig East was always available for any assistance with his engaging and friendly personality. Even though our program have completed, Darren remains available to help in any way he can. I look forward to our company growing and residing in the great space Gig East is creating.
As an organization dedicated to accelerating the smart city movement nationally, US Ignite is a collaborative of local forward thinking communities who refuse to wait for a solution to be given to them and instead choose to develop the solutions that can be modeled by other communities who want to grow and succeed.
Gig East and Wilson North Carolina embodies the spirit necessary to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs and advanced technologies but proactively exercising leadership and not waiting for success to come to the, but develop it locally and lead the country by example.
US Ignite is dedicated to building the smart city movement nationally through a partnership with local organizations actively working to build their local innovation ecosystem and infrastructure to form a robust partnership of communities driving new economies.
US Ignite builds national partnerships that accelerate successes by helping to bring them to more communities faster, identify collaborative opportunities, and plug local efforts into a national vision for resilient and successful communities.
Gig East is uniquely positioned to attract innovative companies to our market, which contribute to an already diverse array of industries that have found success in Wilson.
The Wilson Chamber of Commerce is committed to providing essential networking, marketing, advocacy and education resources that every business needs to succeed. Having Gig East here to help accelerate new ventures into our market means, we have yet another pipeline of commercial enterprises who can utilize our benefits to grow roots in Wilson.
The Wilson Chamber of Commerce serves as the catalyst that helps new entrants to our market become established in our market. We look forward to the opportunity to help Gig East startups gain a foothold in Wilson, and build relationships with customers and other businesses that help propel them into the next stage of the business cycle.
WAAT's mission is to promote a student-directed learning environment, provide authentic industry experiences, and strive to foster stakeholder relationships within our community. We believe that Gig East can aid us in this mission because they, too, want to help our community thrive by linking up individuals to community partners. At WAAT, we also try to expose our students to a plethora of career opportunities, including entrepreneurship. We believe that Gig East can help further our cause and help provide authentic industry experiences that will help us create the next generation of workforce-ready citizens and innovative thinkers.
North State Consulting is excited to collaborate with Gig East. Gig East is an excellent place to network with forward thinking tech professionals, gain meaningful insights, recruit top talent, and be of service to the tech community.
Wilson is a phenomenal place to do business, particularly for a tech company. We want to do all we can to support the community and local tech ecosystem. We look forward to being of service in any way we can including mentoring startups, assisting early stage companies with strategy, and helping larger companies scale. Our consulting background and network allows us to have a deep bench of connections all across the country and we are hopeful we can make as many introductions as possible.
