Sandy: NY Tech's Time to Lead and Step Up

Over the last few years, and driven by an amazing array of people, the NY technology sector (by which I broadly mean technology companies as well as digital media, interactive agencies, VCs, and startups, along with various attendent professional service firms that work with these companies) has "blown up."

Sandy has now delivered a serious blow to our home city. We, the NY tech community, now must step up to help lead and drive the recovery. NYC has given us much, we now must give back.

I have spoken with a number of people today active in the tech sector in NYC. The good news is there are a lot of people who are already getting going on the response and the different ways in which the tech sector can help out. Some specific ideas I had include:

• Blood drives at the various shared work spaces / incubators. Many of them are centrally located and have lots of foot traffic. Obviously this is dependent on both the state of the actual buildings in which these work spaces exist (I understand at least two were flooded) and the availability of transit, but there is always a need for blood, and the need will remain.
• Some form of hackathon/fundraiser to both raise funds and develop some solutions to help drive the recovery. Ask for donations for every hour people code, and then have folks work to code/develop various platforms that can be used to lead and coordinate the response.

These are just a couple quick ideas. I'd like to hear what others think are ways for us to best respond. This is the time to crowdsource great ideas.

I understand groups such as NYTM will be sending out info soon on what they are doing to lead the response. Stay tuned.

Rob Underwood
@brooklynrob
runderwood5@gmail.com