Following up on the highly successful Interactive Austin 2009 conference, FG SQUARED’s Steve Golab and other community leaders are reaching out to the interactive and creative communities of Central Texas to start the Austin Interactive Initiative.
The goal of the Austin Interactive Initiative, or Aii, is to spur economic development in Central Texas by galvanizing the tremendous talent and technological expertise among the people who live and work here.
S Collective, in conjunction with FG SQUARED and Visual Innovations produced this video to introduce the subject.
Aii is an economic development movement in the Central Texas region. Community leaders who are interested in supporting Austin as a center for social media and creative technology are invited to join this effort on Twitter. In case you have trouble linking from here, the address is http://twitter.com/atxii.
The Austin area has long been a destination for members of the creative class from around the world. Let’s turn this tremendous resource of people into an economic force that will benefit the entire community.
Over the coming months, the SQUARED Root will feature key individuals in the Austin interactive and creative scenes. Let us know if there is someone you feel is an important member of our community who should be featured. We want to meet them and you and then work together to make Austin the hub for social media and creative technology.
The purpose sounds promising, and at the same time, rather vague and unfocused. What actions are going to come out of this? What are the next steps? What does each person need to bring to the table (beyond following via Twitter and creating “our own stake”)?
Maybe all of this is to come…but just as long as it doesn’t turn into yet another brilliant idea from social media that underaccomplishes.
So, I’m game. What’s the plan of action and how can an individual contribute?
Thank you for your comment Chris. Steve has been working with Heather McKissick of Leadership Austin and Bijoy Goswami of Bootstrap Austin to draft a working document fleshing out the ideas in the video and post. We should be posting more specific ideas and plans soon.
Sounds great, Mike (plus Steve, Heather, and Bijoy). Look forward to seeing the next piece and dialoging on what we can all do to be a part of this initiative. Certainly let me know what I can do to help get this further off the ground.