http://Home.nyc

New York, January 31, 2010 - Last year 1,200 applications were submitted to the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge grant and we were one of 50 finalists. They funded 9 applications, most regrettably, not ours.

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

New York, December 8, 2009 - As President Obama packs his bags for the trip to Copenhagen and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we’re taking the occasion to draw attention to one of the more important names that will arrive with the activation of the .nyc TLD - sustainable.nyc.

Take a look at our wiki page for this name and you’ll see that it, and its name cloud, can have a forceful identity and organizing impact on this vital issue. In a time when climate will gather an ever increasing share of our attention, it seems reasonable to set aside a name-set supportive of a sustainable city, around which we can exchange ideas and organize to improve our climate.

While we’re privileged to have Dr. Frans C. Verhagan on our Resident Advisory Network, providing insight guidance into these issues, the Toward a Sustainable City wiki page, and a mechanism for development and oversight of the sustainable.nyc name-set, have yet to be created. So we invite those who wish they could be in Copenhagen today to join here and contribute their thoughts to ways we might utilize the sustainable.nyc name-set in support of an improved climate. (Logo of Copenhagen host committee.) P.S. See Cap & Trade.

Learn about .nyc on our wiki pages.

New York, October 20, 2009 - When Corona.nyc, JacksonHeights.nyc, Melrose.nyc, ParkSlope.nyc,  SoHo.nyc, Tribeca.nyc and 300 other neighborhood names become available upon the activation of the .nyc TLD, how will traditional civic practices be affected? What impact will their activation have on existing digital communication channels? How can we develop policies that assure that these names are used to serve resident needs? What local content should be made available to each dotNeighborhood? What technology should deliver it? Who should publish them? What’s the agreement that assures accountability?

We began focusing on these and related questions on our dotNeighborhood pages earlier this year and have sponsored several public meetings to generate interest and thought on the possibilities.

To further the knowledge base on dotNeighborhoods, Connecting.nyc Inc. recently contracted with the Urban Development Workshop at Hunter College of the City University of New York. Under the able eye of Prof. Jill Simone Gross, Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, a research team of Jennifer Dong, Barry Kogan, Matt Leiderman, and Melanie Reyes will detail the digital resources that currently exist within several identified neighborhoods and present the potential benefits that .nyc might offer. Entitled “A Case Study - Neighborhoods in a Digital Era” the report will be completed by year’s end.

Jackson Hts., New York, June 1, 2009 - I attended the 59th Sidney Hillman Foundation awards ceremony honoring journalists, writers, and public figures whose work fosters social and economic justice last Wednesday. It was a most exhilarating evening, with the recipients having made significant contributions to our awareness of the world around us.

Reflecting the times, Bruce Raynor, president of the Hillman Foundation and the evening’s moderator, at one point bemoaned the seeming demise of our nation’s daily newspapers and asked “How will those communities exist without the ongoing contributions of those fine journalists?”

Living with about 100,000 other residents in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of New York City, where we’ve never known the luxury of a daily newspaper (nor a TV or radio station) focused on our problems and the opportunities before us, I can provide at least a partial answer to Mr. Raynor:

• All too often they’ll have to wait for a disaster to occur before anyone pays attention to a local problem.
  
• Local communication will be very slow and incomplete, with word of mouth assuming a more important role.
• Community memory will be short, incomplete, and inaccurate.
  
• Election processes will be ineffective as they’ll have few mechanisms for reporting on activities, issues, and assessing accountability. 
• Faith in government and the governance processes will diminish as will the quality of life.
  

With the rise of the Net and the broad demise of the traditional newspaper industry, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a printed daily in Jackson Heights or in any of our city’s other neighborhoods. Perhaps there’s the germ of a new media in our  dotNeighborhoods and Issue-Communities efforts that might enable useful citizen reporting and accountability mechanisms. But for the moment, sans a new business model, the ability of either to conjure up quality journalism remains elusive.

However, Mr. Raynor did perhaps provide one part of the answer when he announced the Sidneys “a new monthly award for an outstanding piece of socially-conscious journalism from a newspaper, magazine, web site, or any broadcast outlet. The award citation will come with $500 and a bottle of union-made wine.”

We’ll be scheduling another meeting on dotNeighborhoods later this month where this issue will be on the agenda. (Commons photo courtesy johncarney.) 

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

­New York City, April 27, 2009 - The city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) in preparation for the acquisition of the .nyc TLD (like .com and .org but just for New York City). We applaud this outreach effort and request that all members of Connecting.nyc’s community join us in assembling a comprehensive body of information to assist the city with this important policy development effort.

Over the next weeks we will gather and organize information that might aide the city’s decision making process. (Due date May 27th.) With our public interest perspective, decade-long involvement with .nyc, and the collaboration of our community, we expect that our submission will assist the city in better understanding the multitude of ways .nyc can help create a more prosperous and livable city.

We will augment our submission by including information presented on a collaborative wiki we’ve created, see RFI Workspace. The Workspace links to the abundance of information on Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki, and enables our community to help create an imaginative and innovative assemblage of ideas for the city’s consideration. We are particularly interested in ways the TLD might facilitate security and privacy. As well, we’d like to hear how .nyc can help connect New York City’s civic, social, and business communities using networking tools.

Going forward, we expect DoITT to review the various RFI submissions and, in collaboration with city agencies, business & civic organizations, and residents, to develop a road map leading to .nyc’s acquisition, development, operation, and oversight. (Image elements courtesy Google Maps.)

Learn more about our RFI Collaboration. 

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

­­­New York, January 24, 2009 - How will the arrival of the .nyc TLD change civic communication and the governance structure in New York City? Since 1975 our official “divisioning” has been steady: 1 city, 5 boroughs, 51 council districts, and 59 community districts. To date, the Net has not had an impact. Will it? If so, how and when?

With Connecting.nyc Inc.’s .nyc initiative having evolved from Queens Community Board 3’s 2001 Internet Empowerment Resolution, thinking about the TLD’s role and impact on civic affairs has been a constant. Over the past few months, as the probability of the TLDs arrival has grown larger, we’ve begun to focus on the .nyc TLD’s impact on this now 35 year old structure.

Neighborhood domain names have always been seen as valuable civic resources, enabling those amorphous entities to better provide local identify, communication, and broker the effective sharing of local responsibilities and opportunities. We recently created a Traditional Neighborhood Names page to discuss the possibilities and ways we might allocate names such as astoria.nyc, bushwick.nyc, and greenwich-village.nyc, and how we might assure their operation in the interest of local residents.

In early November we submitted an application to the Knight Foundation outlining an entirely new civic structure, something we called Issue-Communities. Using mapping software and social networking tools, Issue-Communities will empower city residents to create narrow communities of interest - “Issue-Communities” - reflecting their concerns. These Issue-Communities can address longstanding local communications deficits and serve as organizing force to focus local concerns.

Recently we began seeing overlaps and parallels in the Traditional Neighborhoods and Issue-Communities projects, and today created a wiki page for thinking through the development of such New Civic Governance Layers. Join us.

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

­­New York, November 21, 2008 - MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media has selected Connecting.nyc Inc.’s “Campaign for .nyc” as a community partner project.

The Center for Future Media is a collaboration of the Media Lab and Comparative Media Studies. The Center defines civic media as “any form of communication that strengthens the social bonds within a community or creates a strong sense of civic engagement among its residents. Civic media goes beyond news gathering and reporting.”

We’re delighted to have this association with the Center. It promises to be another site where people can learn about our effort and make suggestions about .nyc’s role in creating a more livable city. And we’ll visit the Center often to learn from the civic media developments by the Center and our fellow partners. Visit us at the Center.

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.