Tech:NYC Digest: September 27

Tech:NYC Digest: September 27

September 27, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

In today’s digest, the six-week sprint to Election Day in New York, how to store all of your (COVID and non-COVID) vaccine history safely, and the new tech tools helping you spend less time in meetings.

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  • NYC will appeal a judge’s order barring enforcement of the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the NYPD and other municipal workers, but city officials said it would still comply with the order while the case was under appeal. (New York Daily News)

  • During the 2021 election season, matching funds programs in NYC disbursed a record $127 million in public funds, a large majority of which went to first-time candidates, according to a new analysis. (THE CITY)

  • Speaking of elections: New York is exactly six weeks away from Election Day, and the primary question in front of voters is whether or not they’ll get a televised debate from the candidates before then. (New York Times) 

    • Reminder: The voter registration deadline for the Nov. 8 general election is Oct. 14, and the deadline to request an absentee ballot is Oct. 24. Get more info here.

  • Apparently pickleball is all the rage in NYC right now, and a pilot program offering free courts rentals and lessons in Hudson Yards has you covered.

In other reading:

  • How to Find Your Vaccine History—and Store it Safely—Even if You’ve Lost the Paper Records (Wired)

  • The 10 Best Power Lunch Spots in NYC Right Now (Bloomberg)

  • 17 Seconds With a Spotted Lanternfly: To smoosh or not to smoosh (Curbed)

Slack wants you to cut back on meetings. 

  • It’s a logical position for the workplace communication startup to take, but Slack itself is following its own advice: it enforces company-wide no-meeting Fridays and Maker Weeks, where it cancels all internal recurring meetings for that week. 

  • Salesforce adopted the same practices after it acquired Slack last year.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield’s vision to achieve fewer meetings — without compromising productivity or collaboration — is Slack canvas, a sort of collaborative document embedded within Slack channels. (Protocol)

  • Canvas is meant to serve as “meeting minutes,” a comprehensive, but easily digestible record of any meetings that remain priorities, especially for those who didn’t attend.

Why Canvas was created: Brian Elliott, the executive leader of Slack’s research consortium Future Forum, said the mantra of fewer meetings arose from workers wanting more time for “deep focus work,” but implementing “no meeting Fridays” and other similar policies without a replacement solution isn’t always the right answer.

  • “Those kinds of practices and policies, you can't just top-down mandate them,” he said. “You actually need people to pilot them and experiment with them to figure out what works, and then you need to adapt them to different organizations.”

At a recent Dreamforce panel, Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud put it this way: “Nothing is sacred.” Now is the time to be experimenting, she says, while the tech workforce continues to work out its options about its own post-pandemic workplace preferences.

In other reading:

  • This is where your pay and benefits are headed, according to HR experts (Fast Company)

  • Massages at the office and other perks tech workers don’t want anymore (Protocol)

  • Podcast: Advice from the CEO of an All-Remote Company, GitLab’s Sid Sijbrandij (Harvard Business Review)

  • GlossGenius, a NYC-based business solution for the beauty and wellness industry, raised $25 million in Series B funding. Imaginary Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners co-led the round and were joined by Left Lane Capital. (TechCrunch)

  • Quilo, a Staten Island-based loan syndication network, raised $5 million in Series A funding. Participating investors include FinCapital, StudioVC, Venture Center, and others.

  • Tactic, a NYC-based crypto accounting software startup, raised $11 million in new venture funding. FTX Ventures led the round and was joined by Lux Capital, Exponent Founders Capital, Definition Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Founders Fund, Ramp, and a group of individuals. (TechCrunch)

  • September 28: Virtual: M&A in Today’s Market, with Forerunner Ventures founder and managing partner Kristen Green, Citi Global M&A vice chair Christina Mohr, and others. Hosted by Axios. Register here.

  • September 29: Virtual: UNGA 2022 and the climate tech forecast, with Google chief sustainability officer Kate Brandt, BlocPower founder and CEO Donnel Baird, Atlassian head of sustainability Jessica Hyman, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

  • October 3: In-person: Accelerating Equity: Universities Sparking Systems Change, with Cornell Tech dean and vice provost Greg Morrisett, Break Through Tech founder Judith Spitz, The New School provost Renée T. White, and others. Hosted by Cornell Tech. Register here.

  • October 4: Virtual: The Future of How and Where We Work, with NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic & Workforce Development Maria Torres-Springer, Daybase CEO Joel Steinhaus, and others. Hosted by Savills. Register here.

  • October 7: In-person: Latinx in Tech: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, with Tech:NYC, Mastercard, Google for Startups, and Inicio Ventures. Register here.

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