Jelly’s back tomorrow in a brand new location in Williamsburg. (Thanks to my friend Mark Low for hosting!)

RSVP if you’re gonna be there. We’ve got a great lineup so far. Hope you can make it!

MushyGushy.com will be at the Circle of Sisters Expo 2007 this weekend (September 22-23). The Circle of Sisters Expo is an annual event that takes place at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. This is the largest business expo in New York City, focusing on Uniting Women of Color. One of the aspects of our site that we are the most proud of is the ability if the user to change skin tone and gender of the characters - addressing an almost embarrassing lack of diversity in greeting cards across the boards.

Sun Microsystems will be sponsoring the New York Web 2.0 Meetup this forthcoming Monday, September 24th, at Slate Plus (54 West 21st Street @ 6th Avenue). They’ll be speaking about the forthcoming Startup Camp being held in New York City on October 22nd and 23rd at the New York City Seminar and Conference Center. Startup Camp is “an unconference-style event that’s dedicated to bringing together the various members of the startup community for a face-to-face collaborative meet up where the attendees define the program.” You can watch a clip of a previous Startup Camp here.

The Web 2.0 Meetup is also pleased to announce our other presenters for the evening. They include John C. Havens, who will be streaming live online through his company, BlogTalkradio.com, as well as David Harper (Winksite.com) and Dan Melinger (Socialight.com). The event begins at 6:30 pm followed by presentations and informal networking at 7:15pm. Food/drinks will be served, too.

To RSVP for this event, please click here.

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OneWebDay is one day a year, September 22nd, when we all can gather and celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities. Speakers this year include Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Andrew Baron (Rocketboom), Birju Pandya (Charityfocus.org), Dana Spiegel (NYCWireless), Lauren Klein (One Laptop Per Child), Dan Phiffer (ShiftSpace), Fred Benenson (Free Culture NYU) and representatives of NYC's Digital Expansion Initiative and GatewayToGov. By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly, and we'll be ready to celebrate! For Your Imagination is proud to host the OneWebDay After Party with iCommons at the For Your Imagination Studio at 22 West 27th Street, New York City, starting at 10pm on Saturday, September 22, 2007. The bottom line is that the Internet is under threat around the world, and it's up to us to celebrate and protect it. See you there.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about “The Great NYC Taxi Strike of 2007,” and later, indirectly, about the impact of credit cards on taxi drivers. Well, strike they did, but, since less than half (some say less than a quarter) of the drivers actually stayed home, the impact was minimal. Now to Plan B.

Today we learn that the taxi drivers must have gotten some good advice. New York City taxi cab drivers, including the Taxi Workers Alliance are suing the City of New York over the required installation of GPS devices in all taxis. They claim “the GPS devices — which track taxi movements — will give away driving patterns.” What exactly are these “proprietary” driving patterns? Usually, for me it would mean being driven to Greenwich Street instead of Greenwich Avenue (despite making which Greenwich I wanted very clear.) Reportedly, however, the proprietary driving patterns are “routes of their own design that they believe lead to the most lucrative fares.”

Tags: GPS, Manhattan, Maps, New York City, News, NYC, Taxi, Transportation

USV’s Brad Burnham has a good post about web services and open source software today.

One of his paragraphs could be taken out of context and applied to a lot of other things, especially community groups.

If the architecture is designed to further the interests of the community, it will thrive, if it is designed to further the interests of the community sponsor it will not.

If you look around at “tech community” groups in New York, you’ll find some some with architecture clearly designed to “further the interests of the community” (nextNY and the NY Tech Meetup are two of them!), and some clearly designed to further the interests of their sponsor or organizer (I’m too political to call them out here so use the comment section if you’d like).

The point is that interest is not something you can sanitize or put make-up over: it exists in the “architecture” or DNA of the group.

I use nextNY as an example because it’s about as community oriented as it can be. When people ask “Who runs nextNY,” most people can only say, “Well, Charlie kinda founded it…” but then the conversation turns to all the cool things that have spawned out of it because our website is a wiki and anyone can plan anything they want and the only formalities are that someone, in the end, has to hold the passwords to the blog and wiki and Google Group.

NY Tech Meetup is more formal, with Scott and Dawn listed as “Organizers,” but if you’ve ever seen a group get “Gonged” off stage (happened last time) or hung around to “mix” after the presentations (of nearly only NY companies), you know that the community really does power things — Scott, Dawn and the team just set up the shop, and no one really questions their motives. And we thank them.

In closing, I should note that Brad follows the quote I put above with two more insightful paragraphs:

Those of you who know me know that I am a passionate advocate of open systems. But the cacophony of claims of openness is now obscuring the more important point. It is time to get over the idea that the goal is an open architecture. It is not. (…)

So let’s stop debating whether a service is open or not and lets focus on the defining that perfect balance of freedom and structure that will result in vibrant, innovative communities.

Brad is right here. The objective, whether building a community around a web service or around a sector and a city, is to build innovation. Meetups and discussion board stimulate the mind and form new synapses in our community’s collective intelligence. The openness facilitates a level of serendipity, but other factors, some proprietary, are hugely important, like Leadership, which goes beyond “organization.”

If you’re a “community organizer” and you radiate self interest, perhaps its time to take note and start leading: it’s a balance between promoting openness while taking charge.

Read Brad’s full post here.

I’ve been a member of nextNY for about a year now. It’s a NYC networking group with a focus on tech and digital media and tends to attract the entrepreneurial types. On the website the description is that nextNY “is basically a fun way to connect both socially and professionally with young people who have a stake in the future of tech and new media in New York City.” I’ve attended a bunch of the events (always free and organized by members of the group) and have met some great people. I even hooked up with Vin and [212] Media through nextNY.

A few months ago I decided I wanted to organize an event around sports and digital media. I enjoyed speaking to members of nextNY but I rarely had the opportunity to discuss the sports industry. I’ve also attended sports conference but never seem to get my fill of digital media. So the premise would be to hold an event that was dedicated to the convergence of technology, media and sports. More specifically, I wanted to focus on how digital media is changing the business and fan experience of sports through innovation, new distribution channels, enhanced broadband, and digital communities.

I got the ball rolling by floating out an email on the nextNY google group (a great resource to stay abreast of the NYC digital scene). The response was favorable and there seemed to be enough interest to hold an event. I received some great advice and tips from nextNY founder and event expert Charlie. Basically, I needed to secure a date, a venue, speakers and attendees. Charlie also recommended I follow the community conversation format that is used at most nextNY events. About six conversation leaders are dispersed throughout the crowd but there are no tiers. Everyone is part of the audience and everyone can participate. The event relies on audience participation, questions, etc. to move things along.

The most difficult aspect was securing a location. It’s tough to find a spot in NYC to hold 60 people. Luckily, my friend Marc is a lawyer at Weil Gotshal and was eager to participate in the event. He navigated through law firm bureaucracy to secure a pretty nifty conference room on the 24th floor of their offices in the GM Building. After a bit of haggling Marc even made sure refreshments and beverages were served.

Inviting people to speak was actually one of the easier tasks. With the help of a bunch of Nexters I sent out invites to 10-12 speakers. Although many people declined it seemed that everybody was flattered when asked to participate. This is also a great excuse to contact executives in your industry that you are interested in meeting. Up until the very last day I was rotating speakers in and out, but there always seemed an ample supply of qualified conversation leaders.

Getting people to attend the event was not a problem. Between nextNY, networking through my sports contacts and some nice coverage from Silicon Alley Insider we easily reached the maximum of 50 guests. Most of the crowd had not previously attended a nextNY event so it was great to recruit some new members and hopefully add a sports influence to the group.

The actual nextSports event was great. The conversation was interesting and the balance between the conversation leaders and the participants was perfect. I managed not to butcher the introductions and must have done an adequate job playing moderator because everybody seemed to get right into the swing of things. At some point during the event, as I scanned the room and saw over 50 engaged and interested faces, I realize that this was going super well! Afterwards a few people mentioned how passionate everybody in the room is about the issues and the industry. That’s nice to hear.

After the conversation ended people stuck around for over one half hour to network and chat. I was a bit overwhelmed as a group of people rushed up to speak with me. I’m usually the pushy guy who jumps out of nowhere to attack an important executive. Everybody I spoke with had kind words and seemed to have enjoyed and appreciated the event. My lunch hour is booked up for the next few weeks and I was invited to a few more networking events.

Big thanks to Marc Rosen and Weil Gotschal for providing a great venue. Thanks to Ken, Dan, Mike, Ed and Charlie for helping organize the event and securing speakers. Also want to again thank all of our conversation leaders. They were very compelling and set great examples for many of the young professionals in the room.

So, as Charlie often points out, it’s not all that hard to plan a nextNY event and the reward is well worth it. I’ve been asked a few times if I’m going to plan another event. It’s a loaded question. I’m not trying to get into the conference business. But you can bet that I plan to continue to help stimulate interesting conversation within my industry, connect people and listen and learn from executives. Please get in touch if you would like to do something similar.

Former film producer John Garland convinced ad agency JWT to build out its own production facilities and eventually start producing its own content without advertisers involved.

Garland, JWT’s Chief Operating Officer, was one of the presenters at the first Ad Club Meetup last July.

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The Luna Park at Union Square Park laid the backdrop for the Fall's first "official" NextNY meet-up.

There were probably upwards of 12 people who showed up.

Whats amazing about the number of people who showed up, as opposed to a normal NextNY event is the flash-mob essence of this meeting. Usually we have events planned out a couple of weeks in advance. Normally there is a topic, speakers and the location is an office.

Last night for better or worse was different. Instead of posting the event weeks in advance, providing a wiki for sign-up/RSVPs - the whole event was orchestrated through the NextNY message board. Furthermore technology further accelerated the process via Twitter.

About an hour before the event Charlie O'Donnell was twittering about riding on a Metro North and catching the subway at Grand Central to get to the event.

Simultaneously, downtown Nate Westheimer was twittering that he had a bucket of beers awaiting the first people to show up at Luna Park.

Considering that Rosh Hashana is occuring as I write this, it marvelous that we were able to have a quick turnout of techies from the community. I think there was even a french journalist there to write about the meet-up.

It would be great to see a NextNY Twitter Group...

Today’s Morning Edition featured a segment on Jelly, our casual coworking project. Thanks to Brad Linder for putting together a great segment!

Link: Working from Home Turns Social with the Internet (MP3 version)