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Week 1: Voter Turnout, Event Overflow, and Suggestions

1. Introduction

This blog will be used to report on my progress as a community-elected board member at the NY Tech Meetup. Once a week, I’ll draft a quick, informal post that describes the initiatives, efforts, and discussions that I’m currently focused on.

Reader involvement is highly encouraged. If you have an idea, suggestion, opinion, or even a submission: please share it. You can ask me a question using the sidebar, post comments via Disqus, or respond inline by highlighting any text (courtesy of readrboard.com).

As always, please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make this resource more valuable to you. My goal is to provide accountability, transparency, and action in the most accessible way possible.

2. Voter Turnout

3% participation in a board election is not acceptable — especially given the NY Tech Meetup’s strong, community-focused mission. We need to look closely at why folks aren’t participating and take steps to address the problem.

Observation: The root of the problem appears to be a lack of engagement. The NY Tech Meetup is viewed — not entirely inaccurately — as a monthly demo event instead of a grassroots industry group. Approximately one of every three audience members is new (based on anecdotal evidence) which implies that a mere 3% of our total Meetup group membership is able to participate in the monthly demo event. This is, to put it lightly, an organizational shortcoming.

Proposal 1: Additional online and offline resources are needed to engage the broader NY Tech Meetup community.

The online problem appears to be simpler than the offline problem: folks are already utilizing the NY Tech Meetup listserv to support one another and to converse. We must find a way to better support the existing online community in the hopes of involving an ever larger portion of the NY Tech Meetup membership.

• Action Item 2.1.1: I propose that a group-wide survey is conducted to learn the best way to strengthen our online presence and community.

The offline problem is somewhat more tricky: historically, the NY Tech Meetup has been all about the monthly demo event. As I will propose in a subsequent section, I believe we need to offer more programming in between — and during — meetups.

Proposal 2: A volunteer framework must be established to better support additional programming at the NY Tech Meetup.

At a minimum, we need to identify volunteer webmasters, community moderators and liaisons, group leaders (for the student group, women’s group, etc.), as well as simulcast hosts for satellite events. As the character of new online and offline programming becomes more clear, additional roles will be defined and opened to the community. Official appointments will be made on a meritocratic basis and each volunteer will be recognized with a suitable title.

• Action Item 2.2.1: I will explore options with Jessica Lawrence (who has done some initial work on a volunteer “hackathon”) and report back next week. In the meanwhile, please share your thoughts in the comments.

Proposal 3: The voting rules need to be made more inclusive.

If we hope to build a more inclusive community, we must first broaden our membership criteria. At a minimum, this should include participants in the NY Tech Meetup’s sub-communities: active listserv participants, student group members, demoers, media attendees, as well as participant’s guests.

• Action Item 2.3.1: I will actively solicit feedback via this website and elsewhere toward drafting new, more inclusive criteria for NY Tech Meetup membership. 
• Action Item 2.3.2: Once drafted and peer-reviewed, I will present a proposal at the first subsequent NY Tech Meetup board meeting.

3. Event Overflow

One of the main issues raised during the election is dissatisfaction with the way NY Tech Meetup ticketing works. Having seen both sides — and tweaked many of the variables — I do not believe there is a “silver bullet” solution to this problem short of moving to one of New York City’s few larger venues. As this is currently impossible, I propose that we take a page out of the software engineering playbook and scale the meetup horizontally.

Observation: Many people come to the NY Tech Meetup in search of networking. Despite significant improvements to the after party, there is still much room for progress — especially as regards skill- and interest-based matchmaking. As a further observation, many of the folks who are unable to purchase tickets will attend the after party or get together at secondary venues.

Proposal 1: Simultaneous, official viewing events should be established with several partner venues.

Free-of-charge simulcast events featuring a direct feed from the event (courtesy of Livestream) will allow more members to engage with the NY Tech Meetup on a monthly basis. These official screening events will also allow live participation: a webcam feed will be used to take questions from remote participants.

An added benefit to simulcasting is increased networking opportunities. It is not difficult to imagine a gathering of NY Tech Meetup members at a place like General Assembly or New Work City with demos projected overhead while attendees may freely mingle in the back of the venue. It is also not difficult to imagine running multiple simulcast events and assigning each a distinct theme: networking, hacking, marketing, and so forth.

• Action Item 3.1.1: I will draft a proposal in collaboration with the community as well as several potential simulcast partners. 
• Action Item 3.1.2: Once drafted and peer-reviewed, I will present this proposal at the first subsequent NY Tech Meetup board meeting.

4. Suggestions

I believe constant contact with the community is an essential step toward a more valuable and productive NY Tech Meetup. To that end, I’d like to establish a more reliable way of gathering feedback and suggestions from community members.

Proposal 1: Establish a UserVoice/GetSatisfaction page for the NY Tech Meetup.

In the interim, I will monitor my personal email as well as the comment section below. Please use me as your direct line to the NY Tech Meetup leadership. My goal is to serve as your representative to the best of my abilities. I won’t always do a perfect job, but I’ll always try.

Additionally, I am currently speaking with a handful of co-working space in the city about getting space for a weekly “lunch hours” session so that you can find me if you’d ever like to speak with me in person. Stay tuned for more information on that front.

• Action Item 4.1.1: Launch a functional suggestions tool for the NY Tech Meetup.
• Action Item 4.1.2: Launch in-person office hours to occur on a weekly/semimonthly basis.

Thanks for reading! Please don’t forget to participate below as well as to help bring the discussion to more members of the NY Tech Meetup.

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