BMW Guggenheim Lab

Image via CrunchBaseOnce in a while on PlanCast an event shows up that looks like everyone in town is going to. This BMW Guggenheim Lab event is the same way. And it seems to go on for six weeks. There are lots of movies, first thing I noticed.

And it is a topic of great interest to me, the idea of reimagining this amazing city.

Wait, it's not six weeks, more like 10 weeks. This goes on and on and on.

New York City

I think visually. At high school this dude who was one year senior to me said he remembered names but forgot faces. I thought that was the weirdest thing to say. At college my first good friend Beth asked me, "But if you know so many languages, what is the language you think in?" I was confused. But I don't think in languages, I thought. Movies speak to me at that level. Movies are great mind food for minds that think primarily visually.

The Bigness Of New York City

New York City is big, like really big. Take the metro region into account, and it is perhaps the biggest city in the world.

Philadelphia was the first big American city I lived in for a few months. I was with a dot com. I would walk to work every morning, a 40 minute walk from U Penn near where I lived, near the movie theater. When I hit downtown, I'd look up. The buildings looked so mesmerizingly tall.

I was in Philadelphia for an event in January for a few hours. The city felt like a small town.

New York City
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Autobiography

Image via WikipediaI have decided to work on an autobiography. The credit goes to Amazon Kindle Self Publishing. Minus that I would have waited years. I like the idea of instant publication. And looks like the lowest price I can ask for is $2.99. I would have liked to put the price tag at 99 cents. Volume, baby, volume.

I am going to do it. I hope I can get it done fast. The idea is to put out somewhere between 50 and 100 pages. This is not going to be a tome. Working on this slim book is going to be a liberating experience. It will help me better launch the next phase of my life, the tech startup phase.

I am going to call it My Version Of The Stories.

The 2010s Belong To New York City

In tech, the 2010s belong to New York City, the way the late 1990s belonged to Silicon Valley. New York City has a good start. The 2010s belong to the mobile web, or at least the first half clearly does. And the mobile web - unlike the big screen web, which itself is a pretty global phenomenon - is the most global of phenomena. And New York City is the most global of cities. NYC has a geographical advantage.

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That is not me discounting nanotech. Nanotechnology swept the Nobel prizes this year. That should tell you. If you could find the right nano startups to invest in right now, you could be looking at some astronomical returns in a decade, but it is not easy to pick winners. Much activity ends up being froth.

An IP Address For Your Heart

When it comes to web technology, this coming decade I think belongs to New York City.
Image via Wikipedia
The Valley has matured. Let them build hardware and data centers. Let them do search. But then Google is a bi-coastal company. A lot of people don't realize the size of Google's presence in New York City. They have rented out an entire block. Some day I am going to go check it out.

This is not me discounting clean tech. It is my firm belief America could see a second industrial revolution based on clean tech. This is not me discounting biotech either. But then NYC could do nano, clean and bio as good as anyone else too. Thanks to the subway, we already are one of the lower carbon emission cities in the country. And we stand to benefit from Google Wind.

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Not Your Usual Yoga Guru

I am in talks to do social media for a yoga studio out there in Dumbo. I hope the talks go through because I sure am interested. Dumbo just so happens to be New York City's own little tech hub. There is no Silicon Alley. There is Dumbo.

Looks can be deceiving. I am Indian, so sure, I do know my yoga, but not as much as you might think. But I will learn. More.

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July 1 Digital Dumbo: Do Not Miss

I discovered Digital Dumbo a few months back after signing up for Charlie (@ceonyc) O'Donnell's events mailing list, the best thing Charlie ever did.

I have hinted at it before, but today I am going to spell it out. Digital Dumbo is the best tech party in town. There, I said it. And Dumbo is the only locale of its kind in town. New York City is too big, there is too much happening, there are too many big, established industries - there is finance, there is media, there is Queens ... okay, so Queens is not an industry, Africa is not a country - for all of this city to turn into some kind of a tech haven. But Dumbo has carved it out. Dumbo is tech Mecca. And it is an amazing location. You see the bridge, the belly of the bridge nonetheless, the water, and you see Manhattan. That is too many good things at once. It feels urban, it feels tech. Dumbo is the go to place in town if you are a techie or someone obsessed with tech.

I was a little blase about Internet Week, I figured I got a little too excited about Social Media Week back in February, so I would take this one a little easy. But I might have missed out. And the July 1 Digital Dumbo might let me do some catching up. The July 1 Digital Dumbo is presenting itself as the wrap up party for Internet Week. That right there tells most of the movers and shakers of Internet Week are camped out in Dumbo.

Digital DUMBO #17 IWNY Wrap Up
Thursday, July 01, 2010 from 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM (ET)
Galapagos Art Space
16 Main Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Did you miss out on Internet Week NY? Or maybe you had so much fun networking and crashing parties that you want to re-live it all over again?

Join us for a summary & wrap party Digital DUMBO style where we will showcase some of the work done for the event by Dumbo's finest. We're heading back to Galapagos and we hope to see you there to toast to another Internet Week NY event gone by!

LiveStream: Internet Week NY

Yes, I did miss out. I was able to go to only four events during Internet Week, and I missed the biggest one: IgniteNYC, after having given word to the chief organizer, emcee person Tikva Morawati only the evening before that I will be there. Ugh. (Ignite, Set It On Fire) Something came up that had me tied.

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But I have not missed out on the World Cup, and I am going to show up wearing a shirt that screams ARGENTINA! So help me God. (Walking On The Moon)

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Reshma 2010, Square, And Pro.Act.Ly

Reshma Saujani, running for New York City's 14 Congressional District talks to The Next Web from Chad Cat on Vimeo.

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Reshma 2010 has been on the forefront of technological innovation. Reshma 2010 has been the first campaign in America to use Square, Jack Dorsey's revolutionary new product. More people are going to use Square than have used Twitter. And now Reshma 2010 is the first campaign in America to use Pro.Act.Ly.

Pro.Act.Ly is going to define campaigning going into 2012.

Reshma 2010 is not just a campaign for the 14th district, it is a campaign for all of New York City, the entire metro region. She is the embodiment of the New Woman. That has got to speak to the East Side. Women should be able to take equality for granted. The brave new world of technological innovation also has to shift the paradigm on gender relations. They go hand in hand. Technological innovation and social progress have to go hand in hand for technological innovation to be meaningful.

Call Out The Sexism

Reshma Saujani deserves the support of the entire NY tech community. She has huge support among the techies in the Bay Area. New York gets to match that. The only other New York politician wearing the tech hat is Mayor Bloomberg himself. I like the guy. I supported his reelection effort last year.

I became an Independent For Bloomberg, I think Reshma Saujani might be able to pull me back into the Democratic fold.

I call it a double whammy. Obama went to Harvard. Clinton went to Yale. Reshma Saujani went to both. Another double whammy is she is a woman, and she is Indian. Electing Barack Obama was a big deal. Race is America's original sin. But electing someone of Reshma Saujani's background is going to be a bigger deal. It should not matter if people who look like you are 70% or 12% of the country. It should not matter if they are not even 1%. Individual excellence should count. But for anyone to suggest Indians are any kind of a minority is off. We live in a global era.

Reshma Saujani is the national candidate for the tech community, the innovation community across the board. I am not just talking dot coms, but also green tech, bio tech, nano tech.

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Manhattan?

"Where do you live?"

What do you do? Where do you live? When you go to an event, those are some of the first questions people who don't know you ask you. They can be nice ice breaker questions. They open up the conversation.

Where do you live? That can also be a question asked by someone who really prides himself/herself in knowing the names of many different neighborhoods in the city. When I was new in the city, I did not realize that. I'd say I live in the city. Then I started saying I live in Brooklyn. People would say, where in Brooklyn? I'd say near Prospect Park. And people would get impressed. Wow, we have a Park Slope dude over here. I did not live west of the park, but south.

Cultural diversity is my favorite thing about this city. People from every little town on earth live here. How do I know that? People from every little town in Nepal live here. I know that. And Nepal is the poorest country on earth outside of Africa. So I am extrapolating that. People from every little town from every country must live here. I think that is true.

I had a whole bunch of audio cassettes of Hindi music with me  when I came to America late in 1996. My next door neighbor in college - Luke Payne - once asked me, "Can I ask you something? Why do you listen to the same song again and again?" And the dude was a music major.

Do all Chinese faces look the same to you? Then you must not be Chinese.

You have to have my global perspectives to see the texture of Queens. Black might be a race, but brown is not a race. It is not even a race.

When I was living in Brooklyn, I was living in Little Bangladesh. When I went grocery shopping, people would start talking to me in Bengali, which I understand a big chunk of, but can't speak back. They just assumed I was Bengali.

"Are you from India?" I have never replied to that question with a no anywhere in the US. I am half Indian, I was born in India. Wtf! It is just that I grew up in Nepal.

But in the "heartland," when you get asked that question, there is usually a follow up question.

"Are you a Patel?'

"No, I'm not."

"Are you a doctor?"

"No, I'm not, but I am very smart."

No, thank you. There is no town in America that does not have at least one Indian doctor. And Patels own motels all over the place. I once saw a huge billboard by the interstate highway in Tennessee: "Motel, run by Americans!" That does not happen all that often. My people pretty much have the motel business covered.

Where do you live?

That is sometimes a class question. Are you rich enough to live in Manhattan? Or do you live in the outer boroughs?

I have a healthy feeling about money, but money does not even begin to grasp the cultural diversity of New York City, and there Queens rules. New York City is the Amazon forest of humanity, and Queens is a big part of it.

The Dying Languages, In New York New York Times The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago....... the languages that make New York the most linguistically diverse city in the world. ..... languages born in every corner of the globe and now more commonly heard in various corners of New York than anywhere else. ...... New York is home to as many as 800 languages — far more than the 176 spoken by students in the city’s public schools or the 138 that residents of Queens, New York’s most diverse borough, listed on their 2000 census forms.

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Fred Wilson: A DJ

Image of Fred Wilson

Yesterday I called Fred Wilson a DJ. (Fred Wilson: DJ) Today my suspicions have been further confirmed. His blog post today is Nice Analogy. This dude who is the most visible venture capitalist in New York City, and perhaps the most loved VC among all the local entrepreneurs he has never invested in and likely never will since he can only invest in so many per year, this guy is a serious music fanatic.

Shane Snow: Tech StartUps Vs Rock Bands "....I started 3 different bands in college. In each one, we dreamed of making it big, landing a record deal, and having hot Japanese chicks scream our song lyrics at us when we toured Asia.....and having geeky Rails programmers whisper as I pass them in the hall at NerdCon...."
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Empire State Of Mind

Fallin'

July 2009 NY Tech MeetUp

• Exit Strategy NYC
• Gliider
• Designer Pages
• urtak

  Image via CrunchBase

• VocabSushi
• SpongeCell
• Zagat

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I had not been to one of these in a few months. I was glad to show up. It happens on the first Tuesday of each month. My favorite part was mingling with the presenters in the same venue, right off the stage. The after party was a downer.

The Exit Strategy NYC gal and the Designer Pages guy were kind of cool to talk to. My favorite part was the Iranian's guest presentation on Iran. I have been wanting to get actively involved in that revolution as a netizen.

Looking forward to showing up for the next one.

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