From my experience with Pd in academic environments, I think they are generally not very good an interfacing with the net communities and other external communities. Of course, there are exceptions, some very notable ones, but think overall the tendency is for academic communities to be very inward looking. This is something that I think makes things worse for all involved, but being involved in academia, I can see why things are like that.

One key reasons is that face-to-face communications and collaboration are much more fulfilling than doing the same via email, IRC, IM, etc. But in the case of the academic communities in NYC, there should be a lot more crosstalk, but some institutions really actively avoid external interaction.

Part of this is driven by the “business model” of many universities (yes, people who run universities think like that, tho many of the academics are isolated from it). Most universities in the US need students to pay tuition in order to pay the bills. If there is lots of external collaboration, then there is perhaps less incentive to pay the $40,000 a year to be part of that community.

One thing that inspires me is barcamps/unconferences, and I believe this is what the role of the university should be. A university should be an institution that supports education and research. Access should not be arbitrarily restricted by things like money, degrees, affiliation, etc. Anyone who wants to come should come and participate. There will be of course trolls, spoilers, people who talk too much, etc. Such things are a part of life everywhere.

We are human, and an essential part of our nature is communication. Therefore, if we don’t have the collective social skills to handle this, it is time to develop them. In doing so, we will gain a vast improvement in the exchange and development of knowledge. For example, at the barcamps and unconfernces that I have participated in, I have seen these collective social skills being used and developed. And when it works, it is really an inspiring experience, and provides an experience that is much closer to the ideal of a conference in terms of the amount of knowledge developed and exchanged.

So now the missing link in all this is the funding. That is a big reason why I am happy to be working at Polytechnic University. It is an institution that has withered a lot from its glory days. In the language of those in the university business, it’s a “third tier” university. One of the key benefits is that there is a quite a bit of space, classrooms, exhibition space, and an 350 seat auditorium that are very much underused. That means I can host events paying nothing for the space. Other universities in the area charge their own faculty and staff thousands for access to the same space.

Also, my job supports me so that I have time to help organize such events. It’s actually not very expensive for the university at all, and we can provide something really quite unique in the NYC area, and much closer to my ideal of an academic institution.