Grading the "Road Map for the Digital City"

When I got the alert that Rachel and Mayor Mike were announcing the Road Map for the Digital City and the associated Roadmap (PDF) for it, I typed the URL in my browser with the enthusiasm of a starving man to food on the table. After being part of the discussions for the 2008 NY Tech Meetup Organizer election and having echoed my thoughts on the State of NY Tech, (in three separate posts [1], [2], [3]), I wondered if they had considered what was needed for the tech ecosystem.

After reading a lot of boilerplate, I was sadly disappointed.

Yes, there are a lot of services that the City will provide to its citizenry, attempt to offer additional services to the mechanations of city government and yes, will open up their data sources such that people can create interesting and worthwhile applications. And yes, it will expand its presence on various social media channels.

But when it comes to helping the NY Tech industry, the verbiage was incredibly disappointing. Especially after communicating my own concept of the needs for a tech ecosystem to the EDC and seeing snippets of discussion here or there.

The Roadmap Supports NY Tech - sort of

Tucked firmly back in Page 53 of the 68 page document, begins the discussion on how the NYCEDC will help foster NY Tech. These actions include:

• NYCEDC Innovation Index - which measures innovation on R&D, Finance, Human Capital, Intellectual Property, High-tech Gross City Product and Entrepreneurship/Employment Dynamic
• Streamlining New Business Creation - the Mayor's Office of Operations is currently exploring new ways to further streamline the process of starting a business in NYC
• Working withfor New York City - lessening hurdles to getting vendors to work with the City
• Help Getting Government Contracting from the Department of Small Business Services
• Making Requests for Proposals for visible by supporting RSS feeds, email alerts and such
• Creation of an Applied Science Faculty from leading institutions
• Workforce Development though FastTrac and JumpStart, Diversity training from MOME and support of the MOUSE program (via DOITT)
• Recruiting Support - a keystone will be "ongoing
  outreach and listening sessions with private sector stakeholders including entrepreneurs,
  engineering institutions, and investors to analyze needs and evaluate progress."
• Industry event support like NYC BigApps and MOME's support of InternetWeek
• Financial support for the New York City Entrepreneurial Fund (in partnership with FirstMark Capital)
• Development of low-cost workspaces for entrepreneurs with 160 Varick (hosting 35 startups) and Hive @ 55 (for 50 media professionals)

Now, after looking at this list, you may say - "But Sanford, there's a lot there. They solved some things right?"

Actually, no.

Let's go to the boards, shall we?

State of NY Tech 2011

There is a concept in academia called information and communication technology centers (ICTs). I was interested in them after leaving Silicon Valley and living in England and discovered that NYC was a budding environment for one. In 2008, during the crash, I was pointing out that the Tech sector could be the guiding light out of the economic downturn (which Scott Heiferman was saying at the same time). But to get there - we needed to address the issues necessary for building tech businesses in the area.

Afterthoughts on Fred Wilson's presentation...

Sitting at New Work City, listening to the USTREAM of Fred's and Chris' presentation and enjoying the discussion on why New York is coming into its own.

I love Fred's topic of twelve factors that make New York a powerhouse. But I also loved the discussion of needing a "firewall" around the East Coast to maintain a place here in the region to avoid the leaps from the East Coast (read: Facebook, Cotweet, Napster, etc) to the West Coast.

NOTE: I want to focus that we are talking about software-based applications/community tools - primarily focused on media.

NY Talent/Staff Issues

There is always a knock on New York in terms of the availability of staff and/or talent - and the argument of google's second largest office is in Gotham (but their staff is for Ad Sales with an engineering staff to support them) and Microsoft's office (similar story with engineering support for their sales teams). But I think there is a problem that the path to building skilled software engineers (programmers) since the curriculum is often not geared for product development. This is why I speak of working on building a better curriculum program for building real product developers.

The real issue is that the MONEY is in the Valley - and here in NYC we have how many VCs and angel investors? I know the discussion is always about:

• Union Square Ventures
• DFJ Gotham
• Ascend Ventures
• NY Angels
• RRE
• FirstMark Capital
• First Round Capital
• Betaworks
• Zelkova Ventures (whoops!)
  

and then? I know there is a lot of funds in New York, but where are they - for this community?

The refrain I hear is after the first group listed here - there is not much more to go after. Oh yes, there are others - but how to find them...

Keeping my word...

So, since my post about connecting and sharing, I have been meeting every week - for at least three hours every week, with different people addressing different issues and ideas. For the most part, my meetings tend to take on two distinct tones - one corresponds to "What do you think of this idea?" which (at times) becomes "Get off your ass and do something!" (me to them) and the other takes the tone of "What should I do with my life?" which inevitably becomes a suggestion to read Po Bronson's book.

For the start-up folk, the ideas and people I spoke to are:

• Derek Lee of 21Causes.org who is taking his incredible energy andenthusiasm and developing a program to generate higher returns for non-profit and chariable giving
• Joshua 'The Red' Russak and his CTO working on RezRedo - a site which is the "thesaurus" for generating company-friendly terms for creating your resume
• Jordan Goldman of Unigo where we finally caught up after playing catchup for three months - and I got incredibly excited by one of the first true Valley-like entrepreneurs I have met here in NYC
• A team building an incredibly fascinating fusion technology project (under NDA)
  

For the other side - it has been a jolt to the system with people in two subcategories:

1. Recently-graduated students or 1-2 years out - where the question is now "What do I do now that the economy is falling apart?"
2. Individuals asking "What I have been doing - is this all there is?" People who have come to NY trying to reinvent themselves, people who have come to get onboard the "train" have discovered the difficulty of NY and where they are heading.

Truthfully, all I ever ask people in this category is what do they truly feel passionate about? As in, even when a kid - what were you passionate about? What did you enjoy? What skills (and watching TV or listen to music is not necessarily a skill) do you enjoy using and making happen?

And the issue is: there is no metric; no grade you get for doing the work you are doing. After so many years of punishment/reward with grades and detention - the grading scale is much different now. And the only people who really pays attention is YOU.

A Different Playing Field

I was watching an episode of "The West Wing" a couple of days ago and the psychologist told something to the President about being graded on a different curve than others. And I noted that the grading curve was based on accomplishments and achievements that people had done in the past.

I believe that we can only grade ourselves on our own accomplishments and achievements - great or small. And not everyone gets to have the recognition of the International Press or a cadre of bloggers - sometimes the only measure of appreciation/recognition is found in the eyes of your children, the contented wagging of your dog or the purr of your cat. Sometimes - it is just your own personal recognition of these acts that you will have. And need to continue the effort to the next project/plan/task/family matter/great accomplishment.

Is there an answer to any of the questions? No.

Is there knowledge in seeking out potential solutions? Yes.

And, as I said before - happy to help in the effort. Simply ask.