Dawn Barber, cofounder of the wildly popular New York Tech Meetup, recently started another group: CUNY Tech Meetup. Its goal is to galvanize the City University of New York’s tech community, from students to professors, and create an open forum where CUNY community members can connect to gain insight about, and be inspired by, NYC’s tech and innovation culture. We admire the mission of CUNY Tech Meetup, and were happy to host one of their events in our New York headquarters at 11 Times Square last month.
Our objective was to share a small sample of the civic tech activity in New York with students who are just embarking on their careers. It’s important that the next generation of talent know that you can make a living bringing government and citizens together to tackle important social and political issues, and it’s important that we broaden access to this field.
We shared the civic engagement work we’re doing at Microsoft, but quickly opened the floor to Dawn’s all-star roster of civic tech leaders. Most notably, we were honored to be joined by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who has led so much of the city’s tech and open government work.
We also heard from Noel Hidalgo of BetaNYC, CUNY Civic Innovation Fellows Barry Ibrahima and Eli Rivera, Deanna Zandt of Lux Digital, Jeanne Brooks of DataKind, Andrew Hoppin of NuCivic, O. Liam Wright of True Interaction (make sure you check out his live diagram!), David Moore, of the Participatory Politics Foundation, Noelle Francois of Heat Seek NYC, Claire Fontaine of Data & Society, and David Goldstein of Collective Decision Engines. Enjoy some photos, below, and join CUNY Tech Meetup.