The Message: May 2024 

Hello everyone! Welcome to May, a month filled with milestones, celebration, and reflection. ¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Happy Mother’s Day, and wishing you a meaningful Memorial Day. Also, Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage and Mental Health Awareness Month!

Every day, we have a chance to influence the future, and all our actions have a butterfly effect. For the last decade, we’ve centered compassion, progress, and human rights within our work. On Friday, May 10th, we will celebrate three unique milestones that amplify those values—the graduation of our 91st Civic Innovation Fellow, the debut of our Mapping for Equity zine, and the launch of El Puente/Community Tech NY’s new community-owned network in Williamsburg!

We hope you can join us at El Puente (211 South 4th St, Brooklyn) for a Community DiscoTech on Friday, May 10th, from 3pm to 6pm, and learn how our students are building the future. The Fellows’ graduation ceremony starts at 5:15 pm; please RSVP.

ICYMI — a few weeks ago, we published our vision for a public interest technology apprenticeship program. Now, if you are an employer in the New York City region and willing to participate in a planning process around a PiTech apprenticeship program, we need your help! At this moment, we’re looking for employers to complete this form by this Saturday, May 4.

Together, we will invest in the people who will help us build the future of public interest technology. For a glimpse at that future, check out our Fellows’ amazing work as spotlighted by CUNY TV.

Take care of each other, and be tenacious!
— BetaNYC ❤️

What’s New at BetaNYC? ✨ 

Please donate and fund our Fellowship Team’s State of the Map attendance so they can share their work, collaborate with potential partners, and continue to strengthen NYC’s PiTech community.

Jazzy Smith, our Fellowship Director, wrote an insightful recap of the Mapping for Equity events the Fellowship Team hosted during NYC Open Data Week. 

Join us for the Fellows’ graduation at El Puente and Community Tech NY on Friday, May 10, at El Puente! 

Thank you Lauri Goldkind and Jesse Baldwin-Philippi, for organizing and having the BetaNYC team present at the Fordham PIT Symposium. We are excited to work with Fordham’s PIT team and look forward to having your students in the fall.

Celebrating Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage 🫶 

Dr. Roseli Ocampo-Friedmann was a microbiologist and botanist whose research spotlighted cyanobacteria and microorganisms that live in extreme environments. In 1976, NASA credited her work as a indication of microscopic life existing on Mars. 

Dr. Tak Wah Mak is a scientist who is known for his his discovery of the T-cell receptor in 1983 and his pioneering work in immunology. It is believed that his research will one day lead to cures for diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, myasthenia gravis and others.

Kalpana Chawla, PhD, was an engineer, pilot, and astronaut. In 1997 she became the first first Indian woman, and the first South Asian American woman, to fly in space on NASA’s Columbia space shuttle mission (STS-87).  

Community News, Events and Announcements

Here are some content picks from our community. Share yours in next month’s newsletter.

Civic Tech and Legislation Updates 👀 

It is time to vote on which projects to fund through citywide participatory budgeting! The voting phase of #ThePeoplesMoney is here, and all New Yorkers ages 11 and up can vote through June 12.

Web forms in the spotlight: Yesterday, the NYC Council held an oversight hearing on Mayor Adam’s controversial web form. Earlier in the week, the Tech Committee Chair informed the Mayor that the form is subject to transparency laws. Need a recap? You can watch the hearing on LegiStar.

In other City Council news, the NYC Council’s Committee on Technology recently held its annual NYC311 oversight hearing. Take a moment to read through the 32 bills attached to the hearing

Have you seen the new Meta AI chatbot? Turns out, it has an issue with telling the truth, and the State Attorney General is demanding answers to its false accusations of sexual harassment. 

AI on the rise: Governor Hochul announced the Empire AI Consortium to continue responsible research and establish AI for the public good. In response to this announcement, the State Senate Internet and Technology Chair penned an excellent OP-ED outlining how to incorporate ethical and public-interest uses of AI while preparing for AI economic and workforce disruptions. 

The state budget has been passed! 
Check out this recap from City & State New York to find out what was (and wasn’t) included. One of the key policies included was Sammy’s Law, allowing the city to set its own speed limits. Check out the press release from Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets.

Speaking of budgets, Mayor Adams released the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Executive Budget, and negotiations on a final version will continue until June. Gothamist has a rundown of which cuts remain and which were reversed. 

MTA Open Data has a big announcement! Last week, the team released new datasets on operating budgeting information. Check out the Statement of OperationsSubsidies, and Headcount datasets. Congratulations to the MTA Open Data Team!

Bridging data and social justice: Mozilla unveiled its AI Intersections Database, which illustrates connections among AI impacts, social justice areas, and human rights.

Upcoming Events 📆

May 3 at 12pm Discovering NYC Open Data: Online Session with the Office of Council Member Susan Zhuang

May 3 at 5:30pm Transit Techies #25: Investigating NYC’s Privately Owned Public Spaces

May 6 at 10am Freedom of Information Law Information Session – Morning

May 6 at 2pm Freedom of Information Law Information Session – Afternoon

May 7 at 12:30pm Tableau Viz Games Competition Kickoff

May 7 at 7pm Turning Polars DataFrames into Pretty Pictures and Great Tables

May 10 at 3pm Community DiscoTech with El Puente, Community Tech NY, and BetaNYC

May 16 at 6pm Book Talk: Inclusive Transportation – A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities 

May 16 at 6:30pm New York dbt meetup (IN-PERSON)

May 29-30 Code for America Summit

June 5 at 6pm Discovering NYC Open Data: Online Session with the Office of Council Member Lincoln Restler

June 6 at 2pm Data Duel: The Tableau Viz Games – NYC #TechWeek

June 10-14 Pride Summit 2024

June 11-13 Mozilla Festival

Announcements, Job Openings and Opportunities 📢

Submit to this list by filling out this form and see our #Jobs channel in Slack for more posts.

Join our community! 🛸

Like this newsletter and what we do? Donate to our 2024 campaign. Your support will help sustain our apprenticeship programs, civic data research and assistance capabilities, and public programming in 2024.

See you next month! Peace, openness, and gratitude 🗽