## BetaNYC meeting July 26, 2017
### Darshana & CS presentation

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_RUL7WSstKO8SxDmiMTDgJALSn2N8lj5280-jcrDIMQ/edit?usp=sharing

* we are a citizen scientist collective
* our background is in human behavior and organizational theory, scaling teams, neuroscience, gaming startups.

g0vNYC is envisioned as a self-regulating viable system for self-governance
- self-regulating systems can deal effectively with variety, such as citizen variety.
- Must regulate between top-down and bottom-up directions.
- Top must be able to take in variety from the bottom.
- pol.is is a great example of sending clear signals (no letters / phone calls)
- Channels and Transducers (jargon terms?)

Short term goal: experimentaion to understand what tools and processes can build viable systems here in NYC. Main elements:
- pol.is
- facilitators
- events (hackathons)
- media / creative communication

What's new for vNYC?
- NEW: extending pol.is to add zipcodes
- SAME: use Facebook ads
- SAME: use pol.is data in journalism and public debates

### Facilitation
Structured conversations: ORID
Objective
Reflective
Iterpretive
Decisional

Facilitation training: Liz idea to bring vTaiwan facilitators here to NYC to hold an English language training.

### Hackathons and open data

Hackathons: good for engagement and building more tools. Want to have a data science and journalism hackathon. Invite smaller newsrooms and independent journalists paired with data scientists.

OpenData: thanks to BetaNYC for making this ecosystem so robust!

### Impact mapping:
(nice diagram) begins with "Reform organizational structures to give citizens a voice in their own governance.

### LOOKING FOR:
- Work with you to bring new processes and tools to the community board (CIL)
- Hackathon partnerships
- Releaseing our data in the same ethos as your open data work

*Motto: you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.*

### Q&A
CS: We're currently a for-profit. It's what we currently have, and it's how we're getting started. Could be fiscally sponsored, could do a BCorp.
- CS wants to do education work, so keeping variety of structures is useful. Already does education work in the DR. Also does organizational consulting as a for profit.

***

### Further conversation
Devin:
I work in an open source software foundation for disaster relief. I have the capacity to run as an elected official. I'm interested in how to bring the facilitation layer into the city independent of this campaign, to train folks who have vTaiwan experience and Madrid experience. I want to say the OpenGovernment movement here in NYC is producing a ton of materials needed when trying to encourage politicians to do what we want to do. Diversity of tactics. The opendata / opengov community has been offering a lot of carrots. Challenge is that it doesn't bring an urgency, so i want to be "the stick". point out the money waste, fraud, corruption, get IT procurement up to standards with 18F -- and say if you don't do these things you're going to lose.
- Makes point that non-profit fundraising is ineffective VS raising money for politics is very big. It's sort of like venture capital in the tech space. Liz disputes this as a useful metaphor.
- Let's productize the open source ideas.
- If i won, it would be a black swan style event. but either way, along the way we can use these techniques to pressure people to get in the right side. **To induce the feeling of a happening.**
- NYSpeaks (nyspeaks.org) is one piece, so is civic solutions team (18F for our city), constituent services (open211), project council (horizontal fund allocation) -- and all of it gets managed as transparent.
- Instead of a platform with issues, we're offering a platform for decision-making.
- NYC used to be run by the board of estimates, 5 boro preseidents, and XXXX. We could conceptually re-pitch to give 8M NY-ers the same decision-making power as this tiny board used to have.
- approaching boro president level

***
**BetaNYC** can request CBs to show up for citizen engagement. We are in a long-term partnership with government, trusted partners.
4 year partnership with Manhattan boro president to be embedded.
- structuring a proposal to get people paid and make it their fulltime job.

Comunications and media.
Monthly newsletter and quarterly zine that's community produced that talks about all these issues.

election opportunity NYCroadmap.us -- community manifesto. took 6 months to write, outlined four concrete values. Connect, Learn, Innovate, Collaborate. 5 core pillars of community technology.

14 were drafted into legislation, 7 passed. Including hackathons and civic innovation fellows.

BetaNYC has structure and legal issues, so we can't engage in electoral politics. And we have work going on that we'd like to augment.
- How does pol.is get involved in the roadmap conversation?
- once we localize and season it for NYC, we can get it out of Manhattan and spread it across. For all these issues we need a place to "beta" test them.
- I'm down for anything as long as it aligns with our mission and it's legal.

Devin: ability that manhattan BP has, and also Gail have done amazing things. Getting better politicians in.

Primaries: September is a terrible time, school starting, debates barely happen. (comments by CS and Liz)

This year, everyone has to run, even the incumbents have to run.

CS: our strategy is the district. There's a candidate forum happening in a few days in a certain district and we have a demo pol.is starting and have set up email lists ahead of time.

Lauren: the city council district seems like it might be a better goal. More so than Community Boards. PB is also already working at District level.

Community Districts VS Council District
- two opposing counter powers.
- Council districts get gerrymandered every 10 years by the councilperson.
- the Community districts never change
- Census Tracts also change. PUMS have great information but aren't broken down spatially within a city unit.
- Definition of neighborhood. Neighborhood tabulation area. NTA.
- NCY has borders for neighborhood.
- the Boros dont change. Boro lines dont change. There will always be a Boro president, and they have so few statutory responsibliities. and there will always be a public advocate.

CS: there are stark differences within a boro. We need to subdivide. Need granular data to reveal more people's will. (paraphrase)

Taiwan process was tried 10 years ago and failed with one party. so it's a long haul.

BETANYC's "people's roadmap to a digital New York City" was the counter to NYC's official "3rd digital roadmap."
- we can talk about how our own internal process in 4 years old.
- BetaNYC going to revamp the roadmap.
- it was assembled by "nyc's technology community"
- supported by Code for America
- a policy document for NYC: the council and the mayor's office (of tech and innovation, of analytics)
- it's aimed at City Council staff members, chief of staff, the analysts, councilpeople themselves can reflect on and see an opportunity.
- looking to get more media leverage on this, and be more public-facing.
- loking for a location partner in each boro
- looking to help structure the v process here.
-

Strategic Initiatives slide
- online and offline engagement.
- How can g0vNYC and BetaNYC work together to get this all written by March at School of Data, our community conference.

Devin: wants to intelligently endorse the work that takes place here. When politicians assess what the situation is, wants to be able to ...?

Liz: notes that the v process in Taiwan does not include completely open "discovery" phase of the whole realm, such as the completely open listening session that BetaNYC is talking about hosting for the roadmap, or a comprehensive local government system like g0vNYC is discussing. One small contribution is that Liz is writing up a fresh take on the facilitation process with Audrey and Avross. will workshop with everyone here.

CS: we have a plurality, mutliple languages, spatial diversity.

Noel: this is where we iterate for NYC.

Liz and all: let's get this facilitator training sorted out.

Lauren: a lot of people dont see how this is even their issue, so they aren't even engaged.

Devin: have you considered a knowledge base instead of a PDF?
CS: using gitbook, which connects to github. searchable. try putting prose.io in front of it.
Might be a way to solicit comments.

Liz: consider the personalized voice of Q&A as opposed to omnisciently authoritarian voiceless docs.

Devin: AirTable.