Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Between the fabled stories of twentysomethings starting social-media empires out of the college dorm rooms; middle schoolers attracting venture capital before they can even drive; and the revelation that Google employees roll around their offices on the same types of scooters favored by five-year-olds in Brooklyn, the tech industry’s reputation as a playground for people with Peter Pan complexes isn’t entirely surprising — or undeserved. Here in New York, however, the city’s tech sector seems to have found a way to harness the whimsy swirling around the world of high-tech innovation, because the boys (and girls) responsible for making tech one of the city’s fastest-growing industries are far from lost.
New York City’s tech sector might only be celebrating its 20th birthday in 2015, but in that time it’s matured into a preternaturally talented pool of innovators and entrepreneurs contributing their creativity to everything from software development to game design, telecommunications, new and digital media and financial technology. The evolution of the city’s tech sector from playground to powerhouse has helped lead New York to being named one of the most innovative cities in America. Need more proof New York is not just another Never Never Land? Here are five signs the city’s tech sector is all grown up.
1. It now employs over 300,000 people, putting it on equal footing with its more established west-coast counterpart, Silicon Valley.
2. New York’s tech sector is no longer contained in what was cheekily deemed Silicon Alley in 1995, the area around Union Square where the city’s tech sector started. The sector now sprawls across the city, with concentrations cropping up everywhere from Chelsea to Brooklyn’s tech triangle to Roosevelt Island.
3. The West Coast might no longer be the best coast when it comes to finding venture capital. VC investments here in New York grew by 32% over a five-year period, from 2007–2011.
4. City government has got their back in a big way.
5. The city’s financial tech sector is finally moving to the forefront.
“The impression of New York City's tech scene is that its output is traditionally kitschy and consumer-facing. Yet the backbone of NYC has been financial services for centuries. Millions of traders, analysts, brokers, fund managers are turning to tech to try to make sense out of big data to give their hedge fund an edge,” says Bob Sloan of S3 Partners, a New York based company that provides solutions, services and software for global asset managers. "What used to be regarded as a smaller field is now on par with Palo Alto in the business and financial technology sector."