Get Involved

BetaNYC was founded as a community dedicated to using technology to improve all lives in New York. To facilitate this collaborative future, we have adopted several tools to communicate. Explore and join our online communities below.

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive a round-up of community updates, upcoming events, featured news, projects, and datasets. Want to add your announcements to our newsletter? Fill out this form.

BetaNYC on Slack

A portion of our community is online 24/7. We use Slack.com as tool to stay connected to each other.

Facebook Group

With over 1,200+ members, the “NYC Civic Technology, Design, & Open Government” facebook group is one of the most active outlets where members near and far share news, articles, and projects.

Events via Meetup.com

We pride ourselves as being one of the largest civic hacking communities in the world. We meet regularly and you can find our next event here.

BetaNYC’s Community’s Code of Conduct

We believe in a welcoming and safe community for all. Our activities and events should foster meaningful collaboration between participants, community members, and government partners. We expect internal governance, participants, advocacy, activities, and events to be:

  1. Provide a safe, respectful, and welcoming environment where all are free to fully express their ideas and identities free from discrimination or harassment. All spaces, online or physical, shall be governed by BetaNYC’s anti-harassment policy.
  2. Default to open and work to be objective.
  3. Collaborate for the purpose of generating ideas that empower, innovate, and develop local capacity.
  4. Presume the value of others and cherish everyone’s ideas, skills, and contributions.
  5. Encourage participants to listen as much as they speak, ask respectful questions, and demystify context.
  6. Foster energy that builds “yes, and” ideas and permit the ability to stretch.
  7. Build ideas, tools, and platforms that are open and free for reuse. Activities should prioritize public use, not private gain.
  8. Work to prioritize access for and input from those who are traditionally excluded from the civic process, be inclusive of all Boroughs, and be considerate of our Hudson River neighbors.
  9. Actively involve stakeholders, community groups, and those with subject matter expertise in all decision-making processes.
  10. Ensure that relationships and conversations between, and among, stakeholders e.g. elected officials, their staff, and government representatives, community based organizations and their partners, and members of the BetaNYC community — remain respectful, participatory, and productive.