How to work with city government

I walk into the Kimmel Center at NYU last Thursday and am pretty floored.

I’m there for Pilot Pitchfest ‘25 — a gathering of NYC agencies talking about problems that they need help with — and am stunned by how it breaks my frame.

For me “government” has always been a big, bureaucratic monolith. The idea of working slowly around red-tape always turned me off — and that’s why for the longest time I’ve thought about making change at the B2C and B2B levels.

But Pilot Pitchfest surprises me.

It’s 20+ agencies openly pitching 40 projects that they need help with including:

— Laurian Farell, Deputy Commissioner, Bureau of Coastal Resilience on building future seawalls to support thriving communities

— Alan Cohn, Senior Policy & Science Advisor at the DEP on monitoring the thousands of rain gardens in the city

— Julie Tsitron, Chief Data Officer at NYC Parks and Chris Borman, Director of Tree Preservation at NYC Parks on building an urban wood reuse system

— My old debate friend Alec Bardey, Mobility Data Program Lead at the Department of Transportation, on using computer vision to improve traffic counting

It feels more like hackathon then government — and for the first time it makes me optimistic about working with the city.

If you’re interested in looking at the full list of projects or applying to work on any of them, here’s the link!

Till next time,
Mayank

P.S. Hosting a rewilding mission this weekend! Will send details about it tomorrow