What is neighborhood tech, anyway?

💡 I've been having a lot of conversations lately about the emerging field of "neighborhood tech." It's so fascinating, how people think about technology locally and even hyperlocally. Especially in San Francisco. I could host five hackathons this weekend with just one prompt: "What would a better Nextdoor look like?"

I wanted to share one slide I put together for the neighborhood tech build jam that Josh Nesbit, Francis Li, and I hosted last month for the Future of Us ⚡️ festival. I was cracking up because I was putting together a pretty academic-seeming venn diagram with the key elements I wanted our audience to keep in mind (neighborhood tech bridges the digital world, public spaces, and relationships between neighbors). And then I realized the brilliant Danielle Egan said it so much simpler ("my scheming trifecta is flyers, websites, and parties").

All this to say, there's a reason that my hack nights have evolved beyond BYOL (bring your own laptop). Now, in addition to laptops, I bring arts and crafts supplies to hang flyers on neighborhood poles and other fun ways to activate public spaces, as well as greeting cards to leave in a neighbor's mailbox to meet and say hello. Every day community leaders reach out to me with creative ideas of what they'd like to build. And together we recognize that the digital world is only a piece of that puzzle. When we bridge the digital world with our public spaces (that we walk past and see everyday), and our relationships with our neighbors, well, my friends... in San Francisco, we know that's where the magic happens.

Two days after we hosted that event, I was hosting another event, and someone (from outside SF!) who built an app to connect his neighbors came up to me and asked for advice. He said, "hey I built this app for my neighbors, I worked really hard on it, and they're not using it." I showed him this venn diagram, and I asked him how many aspects he's attempted, besides the digital. He grinned and said he hasn't actually talked to any of his neighbors about it in person. Well, then...