Hi, All:

Regarding the name of our group, there has been a discussion for a while. Here let me explain the original name The New York Web 2.0 for Grassroots Causes first. When I first started this group, several web2.0 meetup groups just started in New York, but their focus is mainly business start-ups. I felt they failed to capture the essence of web2.0, which is to connect people at the grassroots level and meet people's fundamental needs. US has a tradition of grassroots organizing and it is going to emerge on the web and use web to help accomplishing their long time missions. So this group was created to meet that need. And the naming reflected it exactly. The name was self-explanatory. Everyone can understand what it is about. But it is a long name and when referring to it in conversations we need a shorter name. So we had the short name Web4Roots.

There had been some discussion of using Web vs Tech in the name. Regarding this, my input are two points.

First, during my organizing this group, for many times, people (especially people working on grassroots causes) raised the issue of tech being neutral. Because it is neutral, they argue, there is nothing revolutionary about it. But I think Web is different from Tech. Web connects people together. And thus it makes it harder for minority at the top to suppress the majority. Compared to other techs, Web has an edge favoring the mass. In this sense, web is not really "neutral". This is exactly why our time is very different in human history. We are actually about to achieve the missions of many grassroots causes that people have been fighting for a long time.

Second, Tech is too big a scope. It is hard to go deep, and we run the risk of staying general and cannot produce anything substantial and meaningful. For Web, there are a lot of issues waiting for people to tap deeper into. Understanding better of web and its implication, exploring and accumulating experiences of applying web in various human domains are of great importance in pushing this movement forward.

Another point (from Matt) is that Tech seems to be an isolated term while Web is more embracing.

Web2.0 as a phrase is a little bit yesterday. But for what it represents, it is still hard to find another word for it. So although we think we should probably take off 2.0 from the name, it is hard to find another name to capture what web2.0 really represents.

Grassroots Web has two folds of meaning. 1. it is grassroots organizations becoming a web; 2. it is grassroots way of building the web. Web is essentially grassroots. Billions of people connected and organized is the web.

I have consulted several members regarding using Web4Roots vs. Grassroots Web. From the feedback, Grassroots Web is more preferred.

Grassroots Web might not be perfect. Other inputs are still welcome before we finally settle down on the name. We will wait about one week in case there are more inputs. But I hope we don't waste too much energy on the naming.

Leon
The New York Web 2.0 for Grassroots Causes (Web4Roots)