The City of Austin is looking to harness the power of SXSW Interactive in the redesign of the official city website. There’s a meet and greet Sunday where representatives of redesign effort AustinGO are looking to chat you up about incorporating best practices into the site relaunch.
Long story short: after a fitful series of stops and starts, last year, the city was ready to award the redesign effort to an out-of-town firm – which, considering the breadth of programming talent locally, was received about as warmly as you’d imagine. So the city rebooted once more, this time with an eye towards a quasi-crowdsourced model, where outside groups could help the city identify gaps they faced, suggest workarounds, provide troubleshooting, and more. For instance, the Open Austin organization came together to help out.
To that end, the city planners steering the site redesign, AustinGo, is hosting a meetup tomorrow with OpenAustin and website-contractors SteelSMBology, where Interactive attendees (and anyone else – no badge is required) can drop by to provide input, learn about the process, or just enjoy some free food. A Facebook invite is here.
Press release:
Join us for an AustinGO happy hour at El Arbol restaurant!
Bring innovation from SXSWi home to the City of Austin! Take a break from the interactive festival and join AustinGO for a happy hour at the hottest new restaurant in town–El Arbol–to provide ideas for the new City of Austin website.
Be There: Sunday, March 14 5 – 7 p.m.
You’ll enjoy: Free Appetizers, Discounted Drinks, Free Valet, Free WiFi
Go to: El Arbol Restaurant, 3411 Glenview (@35th) / 3rd floor patio.
In cooperation with: OpenAustin and SteelSMBology
This article appears in March 12 • 2010.