Last night was the first meeting of 2008 for this group, and we had a great crowd. I’d guess that we had more than 30 people in the room. We had four excellent presenters, and I know a lot of connections were made around the room and at the pub afterwards. Going forward, we plan to have more meetings like this that are focused on sharing ideas and making connections. Hopefully we’ll have another one in about a month.
At the same time, we’re hoping to move forward with our project of actively improving our ability to apply web technologies to grassroots causes, with NYC itself as our overarching use case.
Adopting open plans as our platform is the beginning. I’m already loving its elegance and simplicity, and TOPP’s presenters last night demonstrated its flexibility and potential. Let’s migrate here from the pbwiki. Post your project info to the Related Projects page. Hopefully we can be a helpful use case for the TOPP team as they strive to improve their software.
I’ll end this post with a proposition: a regular planning meeting for members who want to be a part of this group’s core project. The core group could take on the following responsibilities:
1. Building and clarifying a shared vision for the group
2. Planning and executing monthly meetups
3. Recruiting new NYC members and groups
4. Identifying key projects and needs, and rallying the larger group to them
This is self-selecting of course, and we want to make sure that people can attend the group casually without feeling any pressure to contribute further. But I saw enough passion and ambition last night to think that at least handful of members would like to contribute some time to build some momentum here.
See you all in rootspace!