(Photo: DeviantArt)
2012 was quite a year for the New York tech community. Several NYC startups scored monster exits, while others raised millions to up their chances of scoring a ping pong table for the office. Whether or not that hotly debated bubble bursts, we imagine 2013 will be another exciting year for NYC's tech set. Here are some New Year's resolutions from some of the NYC tech community's boldest names.
Rachel Haot, NYC Chief Digital Officer
1. Cook more meals at home (FreshDirect and BlueApron)
2. Shop local (local goods on Etsy: http://on.nyc.gov/ZPpbIp)
3. Read more books (both physical and digital: all three NYC public library systems now offer e-books)
4. Volunteer more often (http://www.nycservice.org/#s)
5. Learn a new skill – like middle eastern cooking or how to use a letterpress.
Ryder Ripps, Cofounder of OkFocus
Work more, vroom bye haters.
Mallory Blair, Cofounder of Small Girls PR
Identifying our year's wins and losses and using that information to create defined roles for new team members to hire in the first quarter. Then the rest of 2013 is about running the business instead of being the business.
Cindy Gallop, Founder of Make Love Not Porn
1. To champion and help every entrepreneur who wants to change the world through sex....This is the one place with enormous potential for innovation, disruption, and colossal financial returns, that the tech world refuses to go. I want to help drive more open-mindedness in the tech community around startups to do with sex.
2. To identify and use anything that is the future of money and payments. This resolution is born out of the frustrations and difficulties we've had setting up our payments infrastructure for MakeLoveNotPorn.tv.
Those difficulties led us to spend a lot of time and effort researching and talking to fintech startups, with the result that I am now passionate about working with and using anyone/thing inventing the future of money, finance and payments, both in an MLNPTV context and also a personal context.
Paul Berry, Cofounder of RebelMouse
My resolution is to keep focused and clever and build the fundamental culture for RebelMouse to grow from.
Christina DiRusso, PR Manager at Livestream
More: Reading, Engineering (currently learning to be a Livestream Encoding Engineer), Entertaining in, and exploring, my new Brooklyn hood, and Reality-TV watching. Less: Emailing, English (honing my Italian skills), Gchatting with my dad.
Josh Miller, Cofounder of Branch
Figure out how to get my (non-techie) roommates to be addicted to Branch, and learn how to rap so I can complement A-Flock's beat boxing (one of our engineers).
Dave Winer, Software Developer and Writer
My resolution for the New Year is: I will do what I can to make tech writing more literate. (Ed. Note: Read more about Mr. Winer's resolution here.)
Ricky Robinett, Hacker at Ordr.in
Be the first hacker in XXL.
Jason Baptiste, Cofounder of OnSwipe
On a personal level, I really want to get back into writing and blogging. It's why I started Onswipe and lead to my book coming out. On a professional level? It's growing Onswipe in a revenue generating machine. It's an aggressive goal and year, but we have the team + traction to do it.
Jose Mejia, Editorial Director at Huge
One of my resolutions, which I think a lot of people can relate to if they're honest with themselves, is to stop using work/being busy as an easy excuse for what are really just basic character flaws that I need to fix. If I can avoid issuing "Sorry I'm running late, something came up at work" texts like they're stock in the Shitty Friend IPO, it'll be a good year.
Alex Taub, Biz Dev Builder at Dwolla
My New Years resolution is to be faster and better at creating relevant pop culture twitter parody accounts- a la @invisibleobama
Suri Ratnatunga, Community Lead at Sidetour
To take no cabs in 2013 unless I'm stranded/drunk in Brooklyn.
Crystal Fawn, Community Engagement at Atavist
To read all the books that Stanley Kubrick based his films on.
Taylor Lorenz, Social Media Specialist at McGarryBowen
Stop and think before including emoji in every text message.
Nitasha Tiku, Editor of Betabeat
Make friends based on charger compatibility.
