NY Tech Meetup

Dear NYTM Community Members –

Our mission is “To support and advance the New York tech community for its people and the world”.

To that end, NYTM believes it is our duty to inform you about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which we believe poses a direct threat to our community of coders, creators, makers, builders, founders, investors, and leaders of tech in New York.

We believe SOPA threatens to undermine the very nature of the open internet and will expose you and your companies to significant legal liabilities.

SOPA is slated for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee on THURSDAY. We urge you to take action TODAY to help stop SOPA.

Here’s The Most Important Thing You Can Do:

Step 1:

CALL CONGRESS – you can use the simple, automated service at http://americancensorship.org/ – Tell your Representative that you want them to vote NO on SOPA.

Step 2:

SHARE THAT YOU CALLED – share that you called on Twitter, Facebook and whatever other platforms you use – encourage others to call as well

Need More Information?

If you want more information about SOPA, check out these resources:

1. General overview and ways to take action: http://americancensorship.org/
2. SOPA infographic from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/12/07/sopa-business-infographic/
3. Letter submitted to Congress by Mozilla, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and others: http://www.protectinnovation.com/downloads/letter.pdf
4. Blog post from Albert Wenger at USV: http://www.usv.com/2011/11/help-protect-internet-innovation.php
5. Blog post from Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter cofounder: http://yancey.tumblr.com/post/14144797713/defeat-the-stop-online-piracy-act
6. NY Times opinion piece by Rebecca McKinnon: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/opinion/firewall-law-could-infringe-on-free-speech.html?_r=2

Other Ways You Can Take Action

1. Tell the world you work for the internet by adding yourself at: http://iworkfortheinternet.org/
2. Sign the petition: http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet
3. Send a letter to Congress: http://www.engineadvocacy.org/voice/about.html

Thank you for stepping up to take action to support the tech community!

Sincerely,
Andrew Rasiej, Board Chair, NYTM and the NYTM team

It’s time to vote! There is one community-elected seat available on the board of directors and we’ve got lots of great candidates running. Voting is open through December 20 and you can cast your vote here.

Many of the candidates attended the Meet the Candidates event on December 5 – you can watch their speeches here:

Here is the full list of candidates:
Ben Kessler
Brandon Diamond
Charlie O’Donnell
Courtney Bolton
Dan Healy
David Tisch
Eric Friedman
Evan Schreiber
Gregory Schnese
Jack Welde
Jalak Jobanputra
Jesse Landry
Jonathan Askin
June Cohen
Luke Haseloff
Matthew Knell
Michael Liebow
Murat Aktihanoglu
Shai Goldman
Wei Zhao
Whitney Hess

Qualifications to Vote and Vote Count*
As we just alluded to, not every proxy vote recorded by the voting platform may end up being a qualified vote in our final tally. As our Bylaws state, only the proxy votes by Class B members — people who have RSVPed for a NY Tech Meetup event via the Meetup.com platform by 11:59 pm NYC time on the Record Date (November 1) — will be counted in our final tally (despite the fact that the voting platform will allow proxy votes to be submitted by all registered users of their system). At the annual meeting, we will work with the Meetup.com team to produce the final vote-count of Class B members, which we will then make public to our membership via our blog and an email blast.

*Procedural clarification: students who have RSVP’d to attend a NYTM through the NYTM Student Group are also qualified to vote.

Questions
If you have any questions or need anything clarified, please use the public comment system below this post so that your question may be answered and then useful for everyone to benefit from.

Thanks to everyone who came out to NYTM last night. If you missed (or want to rewatch your favorite demos) you can view them all at http://new.livestream.com/nytechmeetup2011

Demos included:
CrowdScanner
Pixable
Listly
5ivepoints
Bubb.ly
Foretuit
Zemanta
Mailgun
Smartling
Kogeto
Shapeways
Livestream