The NY Tech Meetup, founded by Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman and co-founded by Dawn Barber, has more than 19,000 members and draws 800 attendees every month. Last year, NYTM became a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization incorporated in New York State and as a result now has a Board of Directors that steers the priorities of the organization. There is currently one open board seat and I am campaigning to be elected.
My mission as a member of the NYTM Board of Directors will be to relentlessly advocate for the needs and desires of our membership, and to ensure that their priorities mirror the priorities of the organization.
Voting is now open for all members of NYTM who have RSVPed to at least one event, and continues through December 20. If you qualify to vote, I hope you’ll consider me to be your candidate.
At a Meet the Candidates event at New Work City tonight, each candidate was given two minutes to share their platform. I have shared the full-text of my speech below.
If you have any questions or comments about my platform, please don’t hesitate to ask here in the comments or via email at [email protected].
Thank you for your support.
I’m a user experience designer. That means I help organizations create easy and pleasurable experiences for their customers. And as a 4-year member of the NYTM, I can tell you that the experience of being an attendee has significant room for improvement. From the ticketing process, to entering the venue, to event format, Q&A, exiting and after party. We’ve become a really big crowd and as we’ve scaled, we have lost a tremendous amount of the camaraderie that existed in earlier years without equally increasing the value that the event itself provides.
I’m a native New Yorker, run a UX consultancy here and have worked with dozens of Startups who have had the heart to set up shop in NY. Whether in their infancy or adolescence, 5 users or 500,000, I have taught them how to understand and empathize with their customers, deepen engagement and create long-lasting fans. I show companies how to make people’s lives better.
When people pay $10 to attend a meetup, and have to hover over their browsers waiting for tickets to become available like it’s a Justin Bieber concert, we need to make them feel like it was the best $10 they’ll ever spend. Tickets need to be easier to procure, both for first-timers and for members who have supported the meetup for years. There needs to be total visibility into the demo selection process, with some degree of input from the NYTM membership. The demos — and the moderation — should be professional and rehearsed, with no duds; we should be training presenters on how to communicate their vision and wow the audience. And for a tech meetup, there absolutely needs to be reliable and powerful wifi, no excuses.
That’s what I want to do for the NYTM and that’s what I hope you’ll help me do by electing me to the Board of Directors.
Thank you.
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