Council Member Maloney questions Khan on LinkNYC, Made in NYC, and private matchmaking companies for social media pilot

Okay, I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember Maloney.

I wanted to ask a bit about some of the resources that are available citywide to help with a pilot program for the social media outreach that we were talking about.

So my question is, do you partner with LinkNYC to help promote small businesses and promote them?

And another group to mention would be Made in NYC.

And private companies that kind of serve as this matchmaker like Neon.

I'm just curious how you'd think about all these different players in a pilot program.

So, yes, we do work with LinkNYC very closely, and it's a longstanding partnership at this point now.

And we also then organize for them webinars and other educational ways to reach more New Yorkers.

So they operate the program.

It's their LinkNYC kiosks.

We're building the pipeline, so more New Yorkers.

workers and small businesses can benefit from them in addition to their own outreach work that they are conducting.

I forget the second part of your question.

Made in NYC.

Oh, so made in the MoM.

Which has helped small businesses before with marketing, if that's something you've plugged into as well.

So we work with MoM really closely.

It's more so on the workforce development side as when...

We've got joint partnerships where we're training New Yorkers interested in post-production careers, other job training programs like production assistant.

That's one of the closest and most deepest areas of our partnership, but our leadership teams are always in conversation whenever we could benefit from collaboration.

We always do so, and Commissioner Espinal and Commissioner Minaya every other week almost are either speaking to each other or seeing each other.

And the last category is private companies that are serving as this matchmaker now, like Neon.

I would love to learn more and we can discuss further.

We do work with EDC as well.

So when EDC has programs where they're convening small businesses or startups or they have the founders fellowship, for example, there is other cross training, cross promotion opportunities where they're aware of our programs.

We are aware of their programs.

And so there are opportunities for all of us to work together.

Definitely we'll learn more about the program that you're referencing in particular.

Thank you, Chair.

Any other questions?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.