http://Home.nyc

­New York, February 22­, 2010 - We submitted a somewhat indelicate proposal to the Minds in the Gutter competition on February 15, 2010. The competition was predicated on the following statement:

“Every time it rains in New York City, our combined sewer system gobbles up stormwater running off all hard surfaces - roadways, sidewalks, rooftops and parking lots - into the same network of pipes that carry our sewage. This system quickly reaches capacity, and the stormwater and sewage overflow into local waterways on the order of 27 billion gallons per year. This limits how New Yorkers can safely access the waterfront, and impairs our estuary ecosystem.”

While the competition was looking for solutions to the sewerage overflow problem from the field of civil engineering (e.g., enabling rain water to seep into the gutter and become groundwater), we saw an opportunity to point out how computer engineering could address the problem. Our solution combined a careful Internet of Things development of the toilets.nyc domain name with civic crowdsourcing. With our test project focused on cleaning Flushing Bay, we entitled our proposal The Flushing Community. See it here.

Being non-compliant with a strict reading of the guidelines, we’re hoping for an “outsider” or “best effort” award from S.W.I.M. judges. (Commons image courtesy of Patti Lowenhaupt and S.W.I.M.)

Learn more about our overall effort from our Wiki Home Page.

­­­New York, December 29, 2009 - Adam Raff’s recent  New York Times Op-Ed Search, But You May Not Find paralleled an issue we have been concerned about for some time - search transparency. While Adam focused on the damage from corporate shenanigans, our concerns have centered more on the impact the Google search engine’s lack of transparency might have on civic affairs. For example, we’re likely to see Google confronting city zoning regula­tions for a variance to build inspirational office space for its expanding enterprises: How would Google rank the activities of organizations leading the opposition? Would individual opponents be able to locate the opposition? Or would the opposition be custom coded to screen land on page 13? Transparency = trust.

And imagine if Google “winner$” begin running for public office, how are we to trust its opaque search algorithm during the rough and tumble of an election campaign? Then we’d clearly see the relationship between link and ballot voting.

Transparent search - a far easier metric than Raff’s search neutrality - is vital to our city’s having level commercial and civic playing fields. We’re looking for resources that foster the creation and assessment of transparent search engines for the .nyc TLD. Follow developments on this via our Transparent Search wiki page. ­ ­(Commons photo courtesy of http://aiblsuki.blog122.fc2.com/blog-entry-95.html.)

Learn about .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, December 1, 2009 - How we allocate and manage our digital infrastructure is perhaps the central question surrounding the development of the .nyc TLD. What is an effective, efficient, and equitable domain name distribution policy and how do we govern its implementation and oversight?

Our Governance Ecology page provides a number of thoughts on this and today we add two others - common pool resource and common pool regimes.   

Elinor Ostrom, an American political scientist and winner of the 2009 Noble Prize for economics, identifies eight “design principles” of stable local ­common pool resource (CPR) management. Typical common-pool resources include irrigation systems, fishing grounds, pastures, forests, water, and the atmosphere. A first reading of her work indicates many similarities between these resources and a TLD. What can we learn from these, her 8 principles?

• Clea­rly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties);
• ­Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions;
• Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
• Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
• There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
• Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access;
• The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities;
• In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.­

­See our ­common pool resources wiki page for more on this “experience of the ages” addition to our governance considerations. (­Commons photo courtesy Sheila.)

Learn about .nyc on our wiki pages.

­­­Jackson Hts., June 15, 2009 - The discussion on the development of New York City’s dotNeighborhoods will continue on June 24, 6-8 PM at the Neighborhood Preservation Center, 232 E. 11 Street. The following items are on the agenda:

• Guest Speaker (to be confirmed)
• Business Models - How neighborhood.nyc sites get started and maintained.
• The Oversight / Institutional Structure – Leadi­ng prospects for the trustee role.
• Technology - Blogs, wikis, networking…
• Inclusion – Ways to engage those involved with face-2-face and extant neighborhood blogs, with this overlay.
  

See our dotNeighborhoods wiki page for the report from this and our previous meetings.­

That’s Wednesday, June 24, 6-8 PM @ 232 East 11^th­ Street. We have 20 seats so please RSVP to tom@connectingnyc.org. (Commons Photo courtesy of sporkwrapper.)­

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

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New York City, May 1, 2009 - When I explain the benefits of the .nyc TLD, people sometimes say “domain names are old hat,” or “Google does names,” that “cell phones don’t need them,”  and “everyone’s already got one,” or even “why complicate the world with a new TLD?”

One of the images I’ve used with these recalcitrants is the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 and the impact it had by creating the Manhattan street grid. Our logo - part grid part web - evolved from this image. Sometimes I get a convert.

After scheduling an early May meeting on Neighborhood Names - e.g. Astoria.nyc - I had a gut feeling that within the promise for improved local communication that these 300+ names offered, there was the spark for a better explanation of .nyc’s potential. So I called my old friend Alex and asked him to help me detect that spark, perhaps via an analogy. Luck was on my side as Alex, who had worked for 30 years developing logistics policy for the Pentagon, drew my attention to the efficiencies the barcode brought to the supply chain and the retail world saying, “Imagine running a supermarket without the barcode.”

So why do we need .nyc? Think of the historically dreadful state of neighborhood communication - no local papers, radio, TV (albeit with a few minor exceptions). Over the past decade oodles of websites have popped up to try to fill this gap. But few provide a broad neighborhood view and the coordination tools to address grievances and opportunities, and none have an “official” identity that enables them to become local “media centers.”

With a carefully planned introduction, what .nyc provides is an avalanche or big bang effect, bringing reorganization and efficiencies like those barcodes brought to the retail world, to neighborhoods. And if we extend from this name niche to the entire .nyc name space, one might begin to see the impact of an organized digital grid.

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.

The Journal of Urban Technology and two CUNY Institutes, the Institute for Urban Systems and the Institute for Sustainable Cities, co-sponsoring a presentation by the Canadian scholar, Anthony Perl, the guest editor of JUT’s issue on “Cities, Energy, and the Post-Oil Paradigm.” Beyond a civic interest in energy and the future of our city, Acting Director Thomas Lowenhaupt attended the presentation to recruit a developer of the “The.nyc TLD’s Role in Creating a Sustainable City” paper. See here for an update on that effort.

One of the presenters, Richard Gilbert, spoke on how Hamilton, Ontario had adopted a plan making energy the center of its land use planning process. (See the 7 land use planning principles in the Hamilton Plan.)

This raises the question of a TLDs role in land use. While its role in providing geographic names - boroughs, neighborhoods, civic organizations, etc. - is apparent, the intersection of names, land use planning, and sustainability opens a new area for exploration in the forthcoming Sustainability paper.