As our company has taken shape over the last six months we have often needed help & support. One resource that has been invaluable is the great NextNY group. NextNY is a group of more then 600 pros in the internet & tech space here in NYC who communicate via a Google Group, and increasingly, through social outings, panel discussions, etc.

The New York tech scene (aka Silicon Alley) has had a bit of a renaissance in the last year or two. One example of this can be seen when Chris & I attended an workshop on financing & term sheets at the NYC offices of Wilson Sonsoni. They wrapped up this session by asking each branch (Austin, Chicago, Seattle, etc) if they had any questions. When the videofeed turned on for New York it was obvious that at least twice as many startup entrepreneurs were present in New York then any of the other locations- including Palo Alto. There is a lot of great energy in New York right now- and the NextNY group helps work as an outlet for it.

We recently held our own workshop with a group of NextNY members. Our purpose was to get feedback on the design & functionality of the site, ahead of buttoning it up for beta. The panel was at the offices of Sportsvite with 10 top tech-heads. A range of experience was represented in various areas of the web; design, usability, marketing, IT/tech, etc. We got much interesting (and occasionally quite opinionated) feedback on what people would want the site to do for them and how. While we were only planning on an hour or two, we ended up talking for more then four hours. Much of this input we’ll use as we make decisions on how to arrange the homepage, which functions to push and which to let fall back a little. There’ll be much to see very soon!

Here’s a picture from the event by one of the of the core members of NextNY- Charlie O’Donnell. He wrote his own wrap-up post about the day.