Announcing: NYTM Organizational Planning Meeting

Fellow NYTM Members,
As we cross 5,000 members and four years, it's time to turn the NY Tech Meetup into a more powerful industry organization. Now more than ever, NYC needs a strong internet industry for the future. If you're interested in helping build out a distinctly 21st century organization that helps its members and is a force in the city & industry, consider attending this special Organizational Planning Meeting on 10/21:
http://newtech.meetup...

(This is about the NY Tech Meetup, 1 of >40,000 Meetup Groups around the world.)

Fellow NYTM Members,
As we cross 5,000 members and four years, it's time to turn the NY Tech Meetup into a more powerful industry organization. Now more than ever, NYC needs a strong internet industry for the future. If you're interested in helping build out a distinctly 21st century organization that helps its members and is a force in the city & industry, consider attending this special Organizational Planning Meeting on 10/21:
http://newtech.meetup...

(This is about the NY Tech Meetup, 1 of >40,000 Meetup Groups around the world.)

Scott H. has a vision...."more powerful industry organization" "a strong internet industry for the future" "build out a distinctively 21st century organization that helps its members and is a force in the city and industry" ....

Questions to start with:

1. What results or outcomes do you want for your members? What results or outcomes do your members want? Who will you allow to be your "members" and why?

2. (more questions to follow)

What could this organization to be be:

We were looking at a macro view of a meet up face time to empower networking and mentoring, community and some education. People passionate about keeping enrepreneurs in NY. The real crux was combining benefits of LinkedIn - cenralized quetions that live someplace - categories of members, not just generic members - tags - ranking or referencing or endorsement field - very specific to NY tech scene. Fear is - we want to socialize people and to see the people. See the guy who did the tech. Maintaining that real world tactile component is key. The juxtaposition between idea that NY VCs looking for dumb ideas with team and much further along. Difficult find that. Need coaching on presentations but also an endorsement, call out people in the room to VCs to heighten importance of the presentation to draw better VCs and better tech people

Provide a more vertically integrated product - corporate & VCs at top - universities and tech at bottom with meetup in middle providing tools to go to the guys up top.

This is a product demo, not a corp. pitch. That's not what VC wants to see. Techies want to see cool stuff. Are we doing the right thing? Should we be showing there's a business behind this? No. VCs can meet them later.
A

Resources on how to do a good 5-min. pitch could be offered, Maybe a sample presentation, It will get up to the communiy so everyone in NYC knows what a tech co. is.

Improving the quality of the content - show me cool stuff and ideas of how this can turn into a business - conneciton between good idea and here's where it can go. At NY TV Festival saw outstanding 2-3min. presentations on PPT. A different audience but had good production value. We'd like to see that.

But how do we go from being an event to an organization?

You're playing a role that's missing in NY of bringing together people on the tech and bus side. Create fertile ground for creating tech start-up cos. More in Boston and West Coast.

NEXT GROUP

THE monthly event benefits people and should continue. networking should continue and be larger. Find ways to facilitate this better and more often. Have ability to have a powerful voice. Could have influence. Leverage it. We may need a leader who can spend time doing just that. We need a mission statement, Revolve around strengthenong the ecosystem of technology at work. Create a group that can fund cos when VCs not want to invest. Create editorial board like Tech Crunch. Make it more a means to an end for tech cos in a bad economy. These exist but hard to get entrepreneurs to talk. Why? Tech co may not feel exclusively part of a tech community. Not like Silicon Valley, totally immersed in the community. Maybe we could do that. Different in SF where they want to talk. Here they don't want to talk until they have a product on the market. I didn't know about that blog. But we want the org to have a voice 24/7 not just once a month or in a newsletter. An official online MeetUp voice.

We have 400 people that come. Little chatter about the start-ups that present after the event. We're not doing enough to promote the start-ups that come to the Meetups.

Vibrant journalism is improtant but 99% of tthings that Silicon Valley talks about don't matter. My personal interest is how do you create great products and get people to use them. Thre's a lot more to do to create great products than just chatter.

Chatter is important. Supportive.

I'm wondering about moving to west coast with my start-up for the culture. I don't have money to fund team. I get a better sense of finding people who'll work on it on west coast.

When TechCrunch acts as hub, they don't have face contact like Meetup. This community we have needs to be more present online. Mailing list going to thousands of people. Needs to be curated. Horrible place and doesn't have to be. That's thousands of people connected together. Have people responsible for the organization, how to urate the online voice, some hierarchical org that represents starfish model.

We don't need off line place instead of. It's an add on.

You can imagine a model where anyone in org could create an event. But - Mike is an organizer of Vision 3 Meetup, one of 75 tech related meetups in NYC. Looming question: how is it that the network of the 75 meetups in NY are part of the org we might be talking about.

Define working time that's important. Define concept as NY Metup alliance of which this is the central hub. So many groups and so many epople many of whom don't come to this meetup but should be part of the larger community. A central directory of resources. You come to NYC and find all the things and people to get your co off the ground. Almost Match.com for the tech Meetup scene. Member survey when you join to slice and dice on lawyers, marketing experts, technologists, or take any slice of community for organizating or find people to answer questions or provide value. More powerful than mailing list.

Form of executive management for the group. Elect people to actively be responsible for the group. Has to be focused on a small no of people.

Strive to become an expert resource perceived on the tech community. When Mayor's Office want to figure out something, we have a group of people focused on the task of providing expertise for the community.

In the meetings, our format is 5 min. Instead of all presentations, some portions of meeting might be a speaker who imparts expertise. We are lacking mentors vs. west coast. Talk about subject of value to the community, not just tech presentations.

I found NYTMUP from Wall St. Journal piece about it as source of expert info on what's happening. That may mean affiliation with other groups. But also media relations. Will also bring us additional members. Have a task force to work with cit or state development boards to bring solid resources into this community.

Have a staff responsible to create web site, VCs, office space, solicit city for meetings with economic development people so politicians are aware of our existence, online voice. No time for this by existing staff. How raise $100K to hire 2-3 people within a year to start doing things.

We have venture funds in the room and maybe the community contributed - membership challenge - incredibly valuable if we could do this to have something like this succeed. A matching fund to what we do.

There has to be a heart in any organization - a single person who generates energy. Raising money is easy. 7,500 people. $5/mo is $500K. But who are we? Where are we going?

NEXT GROUP

A core group, constituency of 7,500 people based on a tech brand. Many constituencies - start-ups, members, investors. Steering committee of some sort. Something is there but it needs to grow up - needs infrastructure, some organization on a volunteer level. Not know what tools are available. Data is lacking about the users. These people will want to contribute their data to get value back in sponsorhsip or marketing. what is the capacity for the venue? How many people are being denied access? Monetizing the constituency is a good thing. Value for everyone. When people pay for things, they value them. Is NYTM a commercial interest or a self-fundig thing? This west coast inferiority complex is strange to me. Everything that's there is here. A quarterly core meet up. Annual meetup. Meetup as a franchise. The core is the data aspect and serving the contituency,

LAST GROUP

Cultural point. NYTM could become the place to start and Internet co. vs. the west coast. What is fundamentally true about NYC is a town of extraordinary energy plus what our community has to offer makes it more than west coast. Potential disadvantages can be flipped. There are many different communities in NYC we can pull to ours to create more of a universal Internet community. Time of economic crisis. People laid off not know what to do. Interesting cultural drivers make NYC what it is could make NYTM the catalyst to come here to start anything up. Cindy's humble. She's a major advertising person,

I worked on wall st. - money but boring - why people in large corp jobs not starting cos? how help them succeed and grow? Why are people attending the Tech Meetup right now? Our room - just for the rechargin of the batteries. If you're bootstrapping, you'll lose energy before you run out of money. It's lonely. People on stage want to show off. But I go to see people succeeding so I'll feel better. If you go and talk to people there, you'll find peope with full-time jobs who want to work on something exciting on week ends. How do we highlight more successes? See successes more frequently? How make it easier for people to connect more easily in small groups? Mentorship. How do you create a community of peers, not a hierarchy? Hierarchy is the past.

Strengths of NYNMA. 50 people were leaders of the industry and made sure the group stayed together. They were connected.

People like smaller groups. NYNMA at max had 7,000 members.

Matt a co-foudner of MeetUp.com now doing a new start-up: everyone in the organization gives a set - x hours a week/year and take the same from the community. everyone self-identified. Self-defined community. Those people would give information on what they'd contribute. To be a member, this is what I have to contribute. I'll give x hours to help about xx. You can look to see who will give x hours for pr, you see who's up but you have to give same amount too.

When I go to meetup, I assume they're all VCs or successful startups but just knowing they're at basic level of startup in NYC that would be powerful no.

At the base it's a support group.

FINAL GO-ROUNd

He'll say what's next at 11.12 MeetUp.

we're talking about community, helping each other.

Using the tech to help us find each other, find resources, connect with each other in a better way.

Good place for people to see what's happening.

How do we as a group hae more influence over NYC as a group? How do you make Meetup as a gorup more powerful?

More of this kind of interaction.

The emotional support, solidarity of it. You see it's not just us. That spirit is so supportive.

This context was good.

Rick warren fills Angel Stadium for Easter Service but for that church it's all about the small groups.

Mentoring and venues. If everybody has something specific to get out of it by putting something specific in, you can be a member.

Scott needs to call the shots. He's the role model of success.

We need to have subcommittees to carry this further.

Bring more angel investors, VCs.

I object to barter system where you have to contribute to be a member of teh community
Leverage NY strengths is one of most improtant ideas.
Ombudsmanship, storytelling, capitalizing on NY as media center.
If we made our mission making NYC a great place for startups, everything would flow from that. Technology should become invisibilie, transparent.

I feel passionate about NYC but lots of people feel it's NY metro.

Idea of people coming together and creating something is most interesting thing in the world to me - create something powerful - sense of powerlessness causes apathy. A diverse group. Different levels of involvement with the Internet.

Scott will make sure whole base of members see these notes. Maybe a thread. by 11.11, Scott will announce.

Here are some links that didn't get mentioned...

"Support Group" for NEW Web 2.0 NYC Entrepreneurs:
http://www.nextny.org...
Pitch fest, mailing list, forum, events, event calendar, wiki, howtos, directory of services, etc... although mostly for very early stage companies.

Technology Events (meetup & beyond)
http://newyork.garysg...

..

Best to not double up efforts (or ignore efforts beyond .meetup) that can help us to leverage what I feel was the point of the night: New York is the center of it all and has the power to leverage media, finance, fashion, culture, art & technology to become known as the BEST and default place to start the next great technology-enabled company.

Lets make the NYTechMeetup the group that catalyzes -and broadcasts- that vision to the rest of the world.

-Niles