The next meeting of the NYC Web4Roots Grassroots Tech Activism Community Organizing Barnraising Committee is now scheduled for Wednesday, April 30 from 7-9pm. After some initial housekeeping (like finally settling on a name) we’re going to try our hand at building out a nonprofit. Jen Carnig of the NYCLU has volunteered to be our guinea pig.
This, of course, has ultimately all been decided by me. Except for a couple of straw polls (including the wonderful Doodle poll) that informed my decision, the members of the group didn’t have too much of a say.
I think that’s ok. In the early going of a group, even one with a focus on cooperative practice, you need to bootstrap some things. And that’s what I’ll continue to do until someone tells me otherwise. Hopefully they will. I’m enjoying driving this bus, but I wouldn’t mind handing off the steering wheel at some point.
So, if you want to have a say in the future of the group, make sure to come on time to the next meeting. We’ll be spending the first part on group planning and governance, and voting on a name.
Here’s some of the candidates for the name (with “nyc” sprinkled in of course):
web4roots
grassroots tech
grassroots web
tech activism
Bring your ideas too, or post them in the comments here.
I for one welcome mattcoop as overlord.
Comment by sbenthall on April 24, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Apparently, “netroots” is a real word:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netroots
Comment by sbenthall on April 28, 2008 at 10:37 am
Again, need to thank Matt to put thing together! Below are some of my thoughts about the naming. I put them up for community consideration.
My original vision for this group is to bring the efforts in web/software community and grassroots community together, because they are naturally connected (since
software is the bridge between physical world and human world). I have posted an article (Web2.0 is grassroots : http://web.meetup.com/27/messages/boards/thread/3022652) before to illustrate the sameness of web and grassroots, in which I said “So software is to bridge human world and physical world. It is a good tool to make social products. Web2.0 is the grassroots approach of making the social product.”
Compared to other techs, software has its own uniqueness. I had a post (http://web.meetup.com/27/messages/boards/thread/2769925) before about this. I can write more about the uniqueness of software/web in the near future.
So I think software/web alone is essentially connected to grassroots, and thus provide the force to make breakthroughs in many grassroots causes. The great effort we need is to identify those breakthrough points and look closely at various grassroots causes and see how we can change the landscape fundamentally. This effort alone is very concentrated and also very big, capable of producing many interesting ideas, tools, platforms.
So for this society, for grassroots movement, it needs such an effort by a group of people who are interested in tackling this together. Even we don’t involve in this effort, there will be some organizations emerge to fill this gap.
As for general purpose tech for grassroots, it can be too general and too broad. It is more like an alliance. I think for NYC, we need this kind of alliance, and I have put in some efforts in building that alliance. I emailed meetup requesting building a grassroots tech alliance, and they have put it on the waiting list (meetup alliance is in testing phase.) I am also contacting other similar groups’ (non-profits, grassroots organizations, tech groups with non-profits or philanthropy inclination, and so on) organizers to form an organizers group to help coordinate all our events and share spaces.
So I definitely see the need of a focused web group for grassroots causes. I also see the need of a general purpose tech for grassroots alliance. What do people think about our focus and how we should arrange these two kinds of efforts?
For this group, in my opinion, I think web/software and grassroots are important points and should be included in the naming. As for which specific word to use and coming up with a pretty English name, I think many of you can do a far better job than me.
If we need more time to think this through, it is better to have a discussion tomorrow and leave the decision to the next meeting.
Comment by freestone on April 29, 2008 at 11:28 pm