Results tagged “meetup”

Thank you to those of you who supported my bid for a board seat in the New York Tech Meetup election. Being considered amongst such talented and accomplished peers is an honor, and being elected from among them is even more so, especially alongside Evan Korth.

I'm looking forward to getting to work on helping serve the community. And I want to emphasize how important the work of the Tech Meetup itself is, because the elections frankly aren't that significant in the greater context of the community — the low turnout of voters demonstrates that well. I'm not that troubled by the small number of votes, as I believe it reflects the fact that people see NYTM as a value primarily for the connections and opportunities it affords between members and attendees, and thus rightly avert their focus from the machinations of the organization's infrastructure.

That being said, I'm excited to be part of that infrastructure, and look forward to doing my small part as one of the members of an exceptional board. My immediate priorities are to try to help the NYTM community be more inclusive and more effective in its goals, and I hope those of you with ideas on how to do so (including my fellow candidates) will share those ideas both online and in person.

Update: Voting is now open. I'd appreciate your support.

Update #2: There's video of my platform speech at this month's tech meetup, if you want to see and hear me articulate the ideas below.

This is a bit outside of my usual realm, but I decided to run for the board of the New York Tech Meetup, the monthly event that's home for the tech, startup and innovation communities here in New York City. Since it's not the sort of thing I have done before, I thought I'd explain my reasoning and offer a few reasons why members of the meetup might want to vote for me.

First, I should mention that there are many other excellent candidates running, and I assume we all share the values of loving New York City and the technology community and we all hope for the best for both of those institutions. Several of the other candidates are friends or associates of mine, and overall we are fortunate enough as a community to be blessed with many good candidates. Given those facts, I'm not going to belabor my credentials as a fan of New York City or of technology.

Instead, I'd like to give voice to a few ideas that are essential to the health, growth, and positive impact of the technology community in New York City. The hope is that these will be qualifications for my election, but at the very least I hope they would be considered useful concepts for whomever is elected.

• I have some experience both as a coder and marketer, as both a hacker and a suit, as an entrepreneur and an angel advisor and the founder of a non-profit, as well as having worked in both the tech and media worlds. Having multiple perspectives is key. It's pretty easy for different segments of the tech community to get elbowed aside by other equally-important factions, and one of the best ways to keep things balanced is by having someone who truly identifies with each of these disciplines.
• We have not been ambitious enough in making NYTM truly reflect NYC. I don't just mean our efforts to be more inclusive by gender or ethnicity, though of course we haven't met (or even clearly defined) goals in those regards, either. Rather, we're often still very limited in the kinds of things we aspire to create as a community, and in the audiences we target our efforts toward. If we keep making applications that only work on $600 smart phones, then we should stop pretending to represent New York when only a small fraction of our city's residents can afford to spend that much on gadgets.
• Let's recognize that we are in competition. We are competing with San Francisco for top talent and to attract the attention of creators who make new, innovative ideas and businesses. We are in competition with the financial industry within our own city, that has dominated the market for technology talent without providing commensurate platforms for innovation by others. Let's acknowledge those competitive drivers, and engage with them seriously to make the case for why the New York technology community deserves the time and attention of the world's talents ahead of any other city or industry.
• There's a "Maker Movement" in technology that's much bigger than just web apps or smartphone apps. From biobricks to makerbots to wearable technology and tech-driven art, we should interpret the word "technology" in its broadest meaning when we go looking for participants and presenters at our Meetups. That diversity of ideas and influences will only help inspire more creativity from everyone who attends.
• We must be a community that is able to hold officials accountable. The tech community in New York is as important as every other constituency. When we are ignored or insulted by politicians who don't know or don't care about technology, we should flex our formidable financial and cultural muscles to make sure that elected officials know there are political consequences to ignoring the values of the technology community. Certainly, we're not monolithic in our individual political beliefs, but there are large and pressing issues that affect the technology community which inspire a broad consensus amongst our membership, and those issues should be as important to city (and state, and Federal) officials as any other influential community's goals.

Finally:

• Let's fix the stupid ticketing system for RSVPing to the Meetup. We can do this.

That's the core of what the New York Tech Meetup community deserves. I can help make these goals happen, because I have the privilege of extraordinary access both within our New York community and in other centers of influence such as San Francisco/Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. I also have been blogging and sharing my ideas long enough that I've earned a bit of a platform for the things that I say, which I would be eagerly motivated to use to serve the New York tech community.

My words here on this site should hopefully also show a track record of having supported all of these goals independently for years before I ever considered running for the NYTM board. If you're hearing my name or reading my words for the first time as a result of this election, you should know that I'm a passionate and unrepentant New Yorker, an advisor to New York-based startups, non-profits and events, and someone who doesn't lightly enter into commitments to a community without knowing that I can do the job well. I am not beholden to any of the large tech companies that dominate our industry, nor am I a member of any political party, and both of those credentials give me the freedom to really say what I mean, when I think it will make a difference.

Everything else you might want to know about me is probably on my about page.

To my fellow New Yorkers in the tech community, thanks for your consideration, and I look forward to talking to you all tomorrow night.

One of the nice things about independent web entrepreneurs is that they (we?) can draw contrasts against those who are giant publicly-traded faceless corporations, either pointedly or with tongue in cheek. Some of the best recent items in this vein:

• The Truth About Evite

This one's from Jonathan Abrams of Socializr (except everyone still wants to credit him for Friendster). The article recites the "Top Ten Reasons Why It's Time For You To Switch To Socializr", including "Barry Diller doesn't care about Evite", "Evite doesn't offer technologies from this decade", and "Evite is a mess of invasive graphical ads".

I don't know Jonathan, but I've heard fairly positive things from the people we know in common and his criticisms ring true; The fact that Evite's emails don't include the bare facts about the event you're being invited to speaks to their contempt for their users. I'm sure they had elaborate meetings years ago to justify this, but the right answer got lost along the way.

• Working at Google vs. Working at Meetup

Scott Heiferman, CEO of Meetup (and a friend of mine), offers some good-natured ribbing at the expense of the Googlers, highlighting the strengths of the nimble and independent with his typical sense of humor. "At Meetup, you take the NYC subway to work. You're part of the greatest melting pot on Earth. WARNING: Some of your fellow riders aren't naturally excited about Google Apps." and "At Google, a few Googlers wish they were at a fast-growing company where they can personally still make a huge difference. At Meetup, some Meetuppers wish we had a toilet like the Googleplex."

Not too many cheap shots, just the confidence of knowing you're doing something good. I had the privilege to find out about Meetup a while before it was public, back when Scott was first launching the idea. I told him then that I wanted his company to succeed, because we needed it to, and was proud to see him being just as passionate when speaking to a room full of politicos last week. Half a decade later, I'm also especially glad he helped me understand just how smart Brad Fitzpatrick was, well before I got to work with Brad. There's some kind of kindred spirit between people who make technologies that help others.

And since Scott uses TypePad for his blog, I was going to remind him he could use TypePad's pages feature to publish his comparison. Then I realized, by using Google Docs, Scott was actually having Google pay for the resources to host his recruiting manifesto. Them entrepreneurs are a clever bunch.

From the New York Times' Sunday Styles section Silicon Alley's resurgence, pegged to a tech Meetup where the crowd was discussing new web startups. Yep, Web 2.0 is hitting the East Coast, though apparently not all of the startups are as interesting as del.icio.us or, well, Meetup itself. Fortunately, people aren't afraid to criticize things in New York, and Scott reveals his prescience:

He began by asking his tech-savvy listeners simplistic questions about their knowledge of the Web.

"You're going to get booed off before you start," shouted Scott Heiferman, a founder of the social networking company Meetup and the organizer of the Tech Meetup.

Prescient words, it turned out. Mr. Robertson faced a barrage of withering questions and eventually slunk offstage to mocking laughter from the audience.

"I got ambushed," he said afterward. "I didn't know it was a 'Gong Show' thing."

Perhaps the tone, especially in this context, was a bit unkind. But that sense that, sometimes at least, ideas just suck is exactly what I was lamenting in my post a few weeks ago. "A complete unwillingness to be critical, an almost astoundingly low set of criteria for acceptance -- these aren't the traits that encourage a community or a culture to improve."

So, to everybody looking for the flip-to-Yahoo-cuz-we've-got-tags Next Big Thing, find a room with a tough crowd. Pitch your idea. See if you get booed. And if you're in the Bay Area? Start being more judicious with the applause.