By Adrianne Jeffries 12/05/11 11:19am

XX in Tech

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Five Women Are Running for New York Tech Meetup’s Board; Last Year There Were None

Is it just us, or has the New York Tech Meetup gotten more female-friendly since it was taken over by a Girl Scout? Last year New Work City-based user experience designer Whitney Hess was briefly the only woman last year running for a spot on the board of the New York Tech Meetup—the largest tech organization in New York City—before she dropped out without comment, leaving 17 men in the race for two board seats in the newly incorporated nonprofit.

But this year? There are at least four women vying for one open seat in addition to Ms. Hess: Read More

By Gary Sharma 12/05/11 8:40am

On The Calendar

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Goooood Morning, Silicon Alley! Gary Sharma’s Picks for the Week of Dec. 5: Parties, Parties And Mo’ Parties Edition, Part 1

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), Founder of GarysGuide, Mentor at ER Accelerator and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

NYTM Board Elections
So, with all the eating ‘n drinking ‘n partying, u probably didn’t realize that election season is upon us. Well, the NY Tech Meetup elections that is. And if you thought the GOP Presidential Nominations debates were crazy entertaining, welllll… wait until ya get a peek at the candidates jostling for a seat on the NYTM Board of Directors. That includes Alexis Goldstein, Ben Kessler (CrowdTap), Brandon Diamond (Hacker Union), Dan Healy, David Tisch (Managing Director, TechStars), Eric Friedman (Foursquare), Evan Schreiber, Gregory Schnese (Product Marketing, Kikin), Izzy Johnston, Jalak Jobanputra, Jesse Landry (Biz Dev, iTechArt), Jonathan Askin (Professor, Brooklyn Law School), June Cohen, Matthew Knell, Murat Aktihanoglu (Founder, ER Accelerator), Phil Thomas di Guilio, Shai Goldman (Silicon Valley Bank), Wei Zhao (Founder, Seatig) and Whitney Hess (UX Consultant). Phewwwww, quite a list, huh? Well, my money is on Senor Tisch of course (Incubator honcho? check. Reality tv star and runway model? check. Beloved by the NY Tech community? check. check. check.). But hey, as with any elections, you can never tell until the final vote has been cast and counted, right? Who knows what kind of dirt the candidates are digging up about each other right now Click here to get the inside scoop on all the candidates and click here for ur chance to meet the candidates this evening @ New Work City and hear their pitches.

Stay tuned for my “Parties, Parties and Mo’ Parties Edition: Part 2″ next Monday.

And now, lets pull back the curtains to see what crazzzy holiday partying madness is going down in da Alley this week… Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 11/02/11 9:22am

the startup rundown

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Startup News: Fitocracy Goes Freemium, SNAP Hires a CFO, And Tonight’s NYTM Will Be Collegiate

FITOCRACY GOES FREEMIUM. Fitocracy, now a year old, just announced a subscription plan for $4.99 a month. Subscribers get unlockable titles, the ability to copy workouts, greater visibility in the stream and early access to new features.

YOUNG NYTM. Tonight’s New York Tech Meetup will feature the annual spotlight on demos from college students and faculty. Here’s the lineup: BodyJam, Commons, Grafighters, Codecademy, Lewis Dots, PlayPower, Hacker League, LoCreep, AdRunner, MidiPHON, Bluefin Labs, Upod, Imaginary Marching Band. At the 92nd Street Y. But if you go you will miss Ben Lerer talking about the story of Thrillist at General Assembly. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 8/04/11 8:59am

Mothership

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Google ‘Committed’ to New York Tech Community, Throws Some Cash at the Mothership of Meetups

Google is the first “Annual Sustaining Sponsor” for NY Tech Meetup, joining Wilson Sonsini and DFJ Gotham. “The NY Tech Meetup is a blast: a stage for entrepreneurs, inventors, and investors to engage with one another,” said David Petrou, a Google engineer who presented Google Goggles on the NYTM stage. “Like NYTM, Google is committed to growing and strengthening the New York tech community, so we’re very happy to provide this sponsorship.” Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 4/13/11 11:56am

The Third Degree

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Getting Some Answers from NYTM’s New Director

New York Tech Meetup has gotten way, way too big for its small, part-time, all-volunteer staff. The group has a hyperactive listserve, thousands of active members and the potential energy of a strung-out Slinky. And yet the organization still doesn’t have the capacity to do much beyond keeping control of the wildly popular monthly event. Is that about to change now that the organization has hired its first full-time employee? Managing director Jessica Lawrence is less than two weeks into the job, but we grilled her anyway. Read More

By Tony Bacigalupo 4/08/11 4:41pm

NYTM

Tony Bacigalupo

Op-Ed: There’s a Lady in Charge! New New York Tech Meetup Gonna Be Big

At Wednesday night’s New York Tech Meetup, Jessica Lawrence took the stage for the first time as the organization’s first employee.

This is a big deal. There will be much talk of the significance of her hire, in particular the fact that, yes, she’s a woman running an organization dominated by men. But it goes deeper than that. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 4/06/11 2:53pm

The Start-Up Rundown

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Start-Up News: Tumblr Down as Foursquare Steps It Up, Plus Tonight’s NYTM Should Be Interesting

This week in New York start-ups:

ADSTRUC WANTS YOU. The company that made it onto Betabeat’s list of 10 Disruptive New York Start-Ups for giving outdoor billboard advertising the Adsense treatment is looking for a front-end dev.

TUMBLR DOWN. That is all.

FOURSQUARE STOPPING UP THE CRACKS. Foursquare went all https:// today, a process that started more than seven months ago. The more secure protocol will safeguard users against simple hacks like Firesheep, a Firefox plugin released in the fall that made it easy even for non-hackers to steal passwords submitted over an unencrypted connection. To be fair to Tumblr, Betabeat did notice that Foursquare’s servers were down earlier today as well. Read More