We’ve trolled Facebook, LinkedIn and odd corners of the Internet looking for the tech jobs you won’t find on Craigslist. Most of these come from people at the company in question hoping a friend of a friend can help them find a good person to hire. Luckily for you, the Austin Post is your friend.

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I'm looking for Web UI/graphic designers for two projects: a custom Shopify theme, and three unique Wordpress themes in three color variations each (nine themes total). Please email andres [at] selloutinc [dot] com with your hourly rate and a link to your portfolio. Thanks!
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Hey guys, I know everyone and their mom is in need of .Net Devs.... but if you happen to know anyone looking, please send them my way! Email melissa [dot] gadd [at] arc-is [dot] com
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Other World Computing is looking for good people in Austin. Roles are Customer Support and Technical Support. If you have any friends who love all things Apple and helping customers, tell them to apply.
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UX Designers: Handsome is growing and we're looking to add an Experience Director, a valuable member of the team. If you want to help us craft beautiful experiences, please email andy [at] handsome [dot] is
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Demand Media is hiring an Account Director for the Pluck Platform
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Seeking a Web developer to collaborate with on a large-scale social project. Looking for someone with front-end, back-end, database, integration and logic skills. Anyone out there interested in potentially partnering up or know of someone who might be? Contact nicole [at] colorastory [dot] com for more info.
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Agency has a client seeking a FED for a more permanent role. .NET, HTML5, CSS, JS, jQuery and ideally CMS upgrades experience. Contact rdiaz [at] vitamintalent [dot] com
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Overwatch is looking for a Principal Software Engineer who understands a multitude of attack vectors used to exploit software to avoid the introduction of flaws.
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Ringtail Design needs a User Experience (UX) Developer / Full Stack Software Engineer.
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Rev Worldwide in downtown Austin  needs a Front-End Web Developer / User Interface (UI) with 4-5 years experience developing robust, multi-featured web applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on a server-side application base like JSP/JSTL, PHP, Ruby or ASP/.NET.
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Charles Schwab is looking for a staff programmer with 3-5 years programming experience with Java, Eclipse or RAD IDE, Unix shell scripting, Linux.
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Mutual Mobile seeks a senior windows developer to work on large-scale Windows 8 projects for major clients. You’ll act as the main full-time developer for a project - building cutting-edge user interfaces, data models, and client-server interfaces, working with clients that are household names.
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Kinnser Software is looking for a UX Designer that will have key input into Kinnser’s user interface design. This position is integral to our success in delivering best in class solutions to customers in the Healthcare industry.


If you didn’t see anything that looked like a good fit, other good tech job resources in Austin include:

Startup Hire
Aquent
Craigslist
Dell
Launch Pad Job Club

Three months ago, Mike Everett gave up his apartment to become a technological nomad. He spent $24,000 on a Roadtrek Versatile RV, sold or gave away everything that didn’t fit inside, and began a new life on the road. He started in Pennsylvania, meandered west to Ohio, south to Nashville, then on to Memphis and New Orleans, just because he’d never visited either city. From there, he set off for Mexico. On his way, the 29-year-old software consultant naturally stopped in Austin for a few weeks. He’d spent time in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Denver. “This was the last tech city I hadn’t visited.”

He plans to keep driving south until he hits the Darien Gap in Panama.

“I’m honestly surprised how easy it is,” said Everett. “It’s really not that hard. You just have to do it.”

After five years of telecommuting as a software consultant, Mike started taking smaller road trips, working from coffee shops during the day while he travelled. As long as he met deadlines and stayed productive, his clients didn’t care where he was located. He eventually realized he didn’t really need an apartment.

“I really like travel and I always wanted to go to a bunch of different places. I kind of did it because I could.”

From the outside, his RV looks like an ordinary van. Inside, the super-efficient design has just enough space for the six-foot-tall Mike to stretch out in back while he sleeps. In the middle, a curtain pulls out from the toilet area to create a small shower space opposite the sink and two-burner propane stove. Shelves pack every inch of space leading up to the front cabin, which looks just like any other van.

Shower schedules determine how long he’s willing to stay in any one place. His YMCA membership lets him visit gyms across the country. Each chapter allows visiting members full access for up to 10 days each year. With five YMCA chapters in Austin, he could stay up to 50 days. “I also work out and do some cardio while I’m there. The showers are a great motivator to go to the gym.”

Kindred Spirits and Hostel Living

At night, he often parks near whatever local attraction he wants to visit the next day. “I try to park in places where I won’t be offensive to people. If you park right in front of someone’s door, that’s bad. If there’s an empty lot, I’ll park there. In Austin, it’s really easy, actually. You can’t park downtown, but you can park two blocks east of sixth street with no restrictions.”

While most older RV enthusiasts stay at KOA campgrounds and RV parks, as a traveller in his 20’s Mike says he prefers youth hostels.

“Camping in the U.S. is expensive now. Near a big city, it’s $40 a night, about the same price as a shitty hotel room. You can stay in hostels for less than an RV park. You don’t have to sleep in the room. I’ve paid to stay in a hostel, use the shower and facilities, and sleep in the RV outside.”

For an outgoing tech nomad, the biggest advantage of staying in a hostel is socialization. Travelling across the country is great, but it can also get lonely. Mike said hostels are typically full of Europeans trekking across the United States as well as former expatriates who want to see their home country on a budget.

“You meet people who are open to travel. It’s a different kind of person than you normally meet in the US. You can meet a lot of really cool people, hang out, go have a beer - it’s a good environment.”

He said he’s also interested in trying couchsurfing as a way to meet locals. “Austin is the first place I’ve really spent time at Meetups. There are a lot of them here. most of the time I meet people by happenstance, staying in hostels, or meeting other people who are travelling.”

While the people he meets at hostels love the idea of meeting a professional who is young enough to really enjoy seeing the world instead of putting it off as a retirement dream, sometimes the locals he meets in new cities can’t wrap their brains around the idea of a successful, employed nomad with a real career. “There’s a distrust of people who aren’t rooted,” said Mike. “I was over by Epoch Coffee and overheard people outside my van saying, ‘You never know, he might just be homeless.’ Technically I am, but is that really what matters?”

The thing that most people don’t grasp is that for Mike, his RV isn’t a substitute apartment. It’s just a place to sleep. “This isn’t a house. There’s a big cognitive barrier. People like to relax in their house. I don’t want to relax in my RV. I don’t want to be sitting in there all day with the blinds closed. I want to be out, at a coffee shop or a bar. This is just a place to sleep.”

In fact, he’s basically only in the RV when asleep or driving. The Yelp app on his phone helps him find coffee shops for work and hole-in-the-wall local restaurants for meals. His GPS app locates laundromats. In Austin, the Meetup app has enough events to keep him busy every night.

“I like to use Yelp to filter by radius around me. I’ll look for top rated places within five miles, and that’s a great way to experience a lot of local things you wouldn’t otherwise know about. That’s how I found Strange Brew, Sugar Mama’s Cupcakes, Bouldin Creek. The bad thing about Yelp is sometimes nostalgia or lack of better options are a big part of ratings. Home Slice was a disappointment. They have over 1,000 ratings. It’s reasonable pizza, but it’s not the epic pizza that I expected.”

So far, Mike said he has yet to meet anyone else his age living the dream of traveling the country just because they can. “I think they’re all in Thailand. It seems to be a really good place for doing this kind of thing.”

Out on the Open Road

He said the best way to get started is just get in your car one day and do it. “You don’t have to buy a RV on your very first trip. Even if you just want to try out traveling, use your normal car, travel between hostels, and just start doing it.” It’s both cheap and easy to practice for a week or two at a time, visit everything in reasonable driving distance, and see if it’s a lifestyle you like.

Telecommuting from coffee shops is surprisingly easy. Without a television, housework or commuting for distractions, there are a lot more hours in the day to experience new things in interesting cities. “If you don’t have to work from an office, if you don’t have a lot of other constraints, you really don’t need much to survive. Just clothes and a place to sleep. The first hurdle is the biggest one. Just try.”

When asked when he’ll stop, Mike laughed. “It’s a big world. I have a lot to see.” 

Asian Americans are the fastest growing population segment in the United States, and Austin is no exception. The Asian American population here doubled between 2000 and 2010 and is expected to do the same between 2010 and 2020.

“Simplistically, the metropolitan area has become a go-to area for Asians of many backgrounds,” said Ryan Robinson, City of Austin demographer. “The Austin Asian community is very diverse and is doubling every 10 years.”

However, “Asian American” is a bit of a catchall category; the U.S. Census Bureau defines an Asian American as anyone from the Far East, Southeast or Indian subcontinent, which includes people from China, India, Pakistan, Japan, Vietnam, The Philippines, Korea, Mongolia, Bhutan and many other countries. These countries may be relatively geographically close, but their people, languages and customs are different – as are the challenges they face in Austin.

The Asian American share of Travis County’s population was 3.3 percent in 1990 and jumped to nearly 5 percent by 2000, according to U.S. Census data. In 2012, it stood at roughly 6.8 percent, according to the Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce. People from India and China are leading the population growth, but, according to the City of Austin, Vietnamese people moving here from Houston are also a quickly growing population segment.

Travis County’s  6.8 percent Asian American population stands far above the national 4.2 percent, and Texas is one of only four states where more than half of all U.S. Asian American-owned businesses are located (the others are California, New York and New Jersey). For perspective, at this rate of growth, by the middle of the decade the number of Asian Americans will exceed the number of African Americans in Austin.

“Unlike in Dallas or Houston, Austin’s Asian American population was growing at a slow rate before the last decade,” said Ramey Ko, an advisory board member for the Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce, adding that although the University of Texas had a high Asian American enrollment rate, most of those students left after college. “Because of the way it grew, there wasn’t any one community that had a head start, so Austin’s Asian community has been more pan-Asian than other communities.”

Despite the numbers, because the substantial Asian American population in Austin is still fairly new, one of the basic problems for this very diverse community is getting recognition that it exists, Ko said.

“The challenge for us is simply not being invisible,” he said. “We’re not even at the stage of talking to people about solving our issues – we want people to know that we exist and what our issues are.”

As a result, Ko said a lot of the Chamber’s work centers around two things – first, trying to get a seat at the table for City discussions, and second, trying to educate representatives on the very far-ranging issues that Austin's Asian American community cares about.

One issue at hand is making sure the Asian American population is represented in the city council redistricting. To participate in the committee set up to draw proposed boundaries, a person must have lived in Austin for the past five years and voted in the last three of five City elections. With such a new population, those requirements will leave many Asian Americans out of the discussion, Ko said.

“Our community isn’t familiar with these institutions and has no experience with this type of governance, then there is the language barrier – there are dozens [of languages] to worry about,” he added. “I recognize the challenges there, but it means that a lot of the things that get announced go right past our communities. Those of us who are involved want to make sure that our community knows that these things are happening and people are attending meetings.”

One resource that will be useful in educating and unifying the community is the under-construction Asian American Resource Center on Cameron Rd. near U.S. 183, sharing its name with a nonprofit serving the Asian American population.

The Asian American Resource Center has been in the works for a while – it was funded by a Bond Election in 2006, when it joined the Parks Department family of cultural facilities. The center aims to move beyond the expected cultural events though, holding health fairs and legal clinics, Asian language classes as well as classes in English as a second language. The 16,400-square-foot center is set to open in May.

“There hasn’t been a center like this before, where so many cultures are housed in one space,” said Lesley Varghese, executive director of the Asian American Resource Center. “The idea is that it’s inbound and outbound arts and cultural education for everyone in Austin.”

One of Varghese’s hopes is that the center will serve as an education point for all Austinites about their Asian American neighbors, bringing people of all communities together.

“One problem is that everyone compiles Asian Americans together and there’s not a lot of understanding about Asian Americans,” she said. “The center will be able to hopefully educate people on the different cultures. Also, the community is so dispersed across the city that the center will hopefully be a place to draw everyone together.”

Asian Americans have historically been lumped together in government data, no matter what their country of origin. 

Collecting data is just a start, said Varghese, who is working with Austin and Travis County on the Asian American Health Initiative. The social services contract breaks down Asian American data by ethnicities to better understand both the languages the city and county should consider translating documents into, as well as the problems facing specific groups.

“Someone who is Asian American would have different issues than a recent refugee,” she said. “Certain communities are affluent, others are not; certain speak English well, and others don’t. There are so many issues; it’s literally impossible to say there’s just one issue.”

There is an advantage, though, to being a fairly new community in a growing city. The Asian American community in Austin is able to learn from other cities’ more established communities and “get ahead of the game on issues other cities have struggled with,” Ko said, adding that as the community gets more included in cultural events, and people recognize the community’s contributions, “it gets easier every year.”

Austin’s overall population has doubled since 1990 and is expected to do the same over the next 20 years. People from all nationalities are coming because they hear it’s a relatively inexpensive place to live, a place where you can find work and a place where people are welcoming and cultural opportunities are abundant. Varghese hopes the Austin American Resource Center will be a place for all of Austin, as they city continues to grow.

“The whole point is to share a culture and build a community in Austin; we want people to come out and take Bollywood dance lessons and volunteer to teach ESL or teach gardening with seniors,” she said. “We talk about Austin being progressive, and we’re becoming increasingly international, but that shouldn’t be a city segregated by populations.”

Imagine being able to attend a cooking demonstration, get all your grocery shopping done and meet a friend for lunch all in one locally-owned location – that location is soon to be the second store of hometown grocer cooperative Wheatsville Food Co-op.

With expanded in-store seating, meeting space and a demo room, the new Wheatsville at South Lamar and Ben White will provide a closer location for South Austinites and might become a destination for the rest of the city when it opens in a few months.

Demolition work, the first step in the site renovation on the new location, is “imminent,” said Raquel Dadomo, Wheatsville brand manager, “and we hope to be open by June 1.”

Wheatsville started in a garage near the University of Texas in 1976. The consumer-owned cooperative food retailer had less than 5,000 members just five years ago; today, its membership has more than doubled to around 12,000. For years, Austinites have been requesting a store in South Austin, representatives said. The South Lamar store will be almost double the amount of retail space as the original store and will create about 100 new jobs.

The site of the new store at 4001 South Lamar was formerly a Wells Fargo bank branch. The 22,000-square-foot, $4.7 million renovation is being designed by Antenora Architects, the same firm Wheatsville worked with on their Guadalupe store renovation a few years ago.

“They have a good amount of experience building for retail food environments,” Dadomo said. “They were able to meet our needs and budget on the remodel and worked with us to create a cost-effective green, energy-saving building.”

The biggest “green” initiative the new store will feature is its lighting, a mix of skylights, LED lights and "Solatubes" that channel sunlight from the roof to the inside of the building, “which will help regulate our energy usage depending on how much natural light we are getting during the day,” Dadomo said. Additionally, all refrigerated areas will have doors and cool LED lights, and the store plans to reclaim heat generated by the refrigeration systems to help pre-heat hot water.

The most noticeable changes for the shopper – other than the much larger parking lot – will be additions throughout the store. For example, the South Lamar store will have an on-site bakery that will service both locations as well as any future stores.

The Wheatsville deli, which features smoothies, sandwiches, a salad bar and a hot bar at the original location will include all that plus custom burritos and expanded in-store seating, in addition to an outdoor eating space.

The meeting and demonstration area will provide a space for Wheatsville and vendors to give classes and demonstrations.

“People have been dying for us to have a place where we can learn from each other about cooking and wellness,” Dadomo said.

Although fulfilling a long-time demand for a South Austin location was a high priority in opening the second store, Wheatsville representatives say they hope to open five locations over the next 10 to 15 years as part of their overarching plan.

“By having more co-ops, we are able to increase our overall impact and get closer to our BIG Direction goals of more local, organic sustainable food, more co-op economy and more happy people,” Dadomo said. “More people buying from co-ops means that we get to buy more from local farmers and vendors.” 

The new Wheatsville will open as Austin's organic and upscale grocery competition grows hotter than a (locally sourced) hot tamale, as Whole Foods and Central Market continue to thrive and Trader Joe's plans to open a downtown store this year.

Welcome to a world of bright colors, spikey hair and tentacles! Cosplayers of all stripes took over one wonderfully nerdy corner of downtown for Austin's very own Anime convention, IkkiCon. If you missed out on the fun, you can still enjoy some of the impressive cosplay from all walks of geeky life. 

BookPeople, The Alamo Drafthouse, Threadgill’s, Scholz Garten – there are some places that are just quintessentially “Austin,” where you find locals and tourists alike appreciating what makes this city unique. Toy Joy, where you’re just as likely to see adults trying out gizmos and games as you are children, is one of those places.

Toy Joy was founded in 1987, originally “created to source meaningful, thought-provoking children's toys, and has evolved along with the city to cater to children of all ages,” said Lizzy Newsome, Toy Joy co-owner and toy curator.

Over the years the toy selection has changed. Although you’re still able to find classic board games and jacks, the store also stocks plenty of gag gifts, like the pregnant lady keychain, as well as unique toys like Rody, an inflatable, rideable horse.

“Curating the selection at Toy Joy is part expectation and part innovation,” Newsome said of balancing the classic with the unique. “We definitely work hard to be a toy store for all ages.”

That uniqueness is what draws Austinite Jesse Moritz to the store.

“It just has a lot of personality; you never know what you’re going to find,” Moritz said, holding his find of the day – a mustache-themed wall clock.

For those who just can’t get enough of Toy Joy’s wares, the store recently started doing toy subscriptions, which work like magazine subscriptions where you pay a fee and a new toy is sent to your house every month.

  
(Photos courtesy Dyanna Hyde, Oxcnpxo and Dyanna Hyde again on Flickr.) 

The store has also succeeded in making itself a tourist destination. Sometimes tourists will visit the store more than once in a single trip, Newsome said, adding that “in a city this awesome, tourists are always looking for fun things to do, but the ones who don't find us online are often sent to Toy Joy by helpful locals.”

As a member of the Austin Independent Business Alliance and the Austin Chamber of Commerce, as well as a participant in the Go Local program, Toy Joy is an advocate of shopping local.

“Austin is unique because of its local businesses, and that is why so many weird and wonderful shops and restaurants exist today,” Newsome said. “It is important to remember your favorite local businesses if you want to keep Austin special.”

That feeling of community extends within the store as well, said Emmet Duff, who’s worked at Toy Joy for two-and-a-half years.

“I’ve stayed so long because of the environment – it’s so positive and happy and supportive,” Duff said. “Everyone associated with the store is amazing, and some of the other employees have become some of my best friends.”

So, what next for Toy Joy? Newsome said there are many plans for the future, but “most of them are secret!”

Well, I know a place you can get a good spy kit…

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Nerd Nite is one of Austin’s greatest geeky gems. It’s a lot like a local monthly TED Talk with quirkier topics and a bar. You shouldn’t miss it.

In the last few months, they’ve added an extra feature before the talks - Nerd Nite Speed Dating. As a single geek, it was my duty to investigate and report back.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I’ve attended speed dating events in four states, and I used to organize speed dating events a few years ago. The idea of meeting a group of people based on everyone self-defining as geeks had a huge appeal.

The good parts were exceptional.

Unlike traditional speed dating, no one here is trying to make money. They just want to introduce like-minded geeks. The token $9 fee is a wonderful change from regular speed dating, which tends to start around $35 and can cost way more. You even get a drink to help with social lubrication.

Since the speed dating takes place before Nerd Nite, you also get to reserve choice seats for the main event. (Honestly, that’s worth $9 by itself.) While I keep calling Nerd Nite a hidden gem, the North Door is pretty much wall-to-wall bodies by the time the actual event starts. The front row reserved seat is a great perk.

Best of all, if you’re the kind of geeky woman who can name the Hero of Canton, knows the relationship between vent and steam in a gaming context, or loves crafting, this is a high quality collection of men. Every single one I met was friendly, employed, and could pass for normal in a random public setting. They even had manners. Unlike regular speed dating, none of them spent their time with me alternately looking between his watch and the prettiest girl there.

As good as that was, the bad was equally grim. The organizer bragged about spreading atmospheric lights over the couches and making sure the women had plenty of space for coats, purses, etc. For that very reason, I staked out a comfortable couch space beneath the sparkly lights early on, but was forced to move to a wobbly barstool directly under a blinding LED spotlight where I could either balance precariously with my coat, purse and book in my lap or leave them on the floor to get trampled. Since I didn’t want to put up a literal wall between myself and the men I was there to meet, I hoped my coat wouldn’t take too much damage.

I don’t know if this is a regular thing, but the organizer was also filming some kind of live action video with puppets at the same time as the speed dating. Imagine you’re quite literally squinting under the glare of a spotlight, balanced on a wobbly stool just tall enough you can’t touch the floor and preparing to break the ice with a total stranger when someone puts a camera eight inches from your face, a puppet eight inches behind your head, and shoves another stranger up against your left shoulder. Don’t look. You’re supposed to ignore the three of them holding an animated, unrelated conversation mere inches from your face while also trying not to interrupt them by talking too loud. Now’s your chance to shine! Go make some kind of meaningful contact with the total stranger to your right. No pressure.

Afterwards, I tried to tell the organizer that was a pretty awkward place to put someone. She told me I should’ve leaned over. Considering people were pressed less than a foot from my body for most of the event, that wasn’t physically possible.

Hopefully, the women on the couches had a very different experience. There were six women but only four couch spots. Since seating is apparently in alphabetical order by first name, I can’t recommend Nerd Nite’s speed dating to any woman whose name begins with A-H.

Likewise, if you’re not a fan of meeting strangers in loud, crowded places full of accidental physical contact, you might want to stick to OK Cupid. The intense physical awkwardness of the spotlight and stool compounded by unexpectedly being in the way of the organizer’s video shoot transformed what should have been a fun chance to meet other nerds into an unnecessarily uncomfortable exercise.

As I tried to wash the dirt out of my poor, trampled coat, my first instinct was to recommend against Nerd Nite’s speed dating, but the fact is, I actually liked the guys I was allowed to talk to.

Heck, even the short, awkward bits of conversation while there was a puppet behind my head and a camera lens practically up my nose were still higher quality than 90% of the conversations with guys I’ve chatted with at regular speed dating. I met a doctor working for an admirable charity, a board game designer who channeled Weird Al, someone who didn’t find Dell soul-sucking and a funny artist. I’d genuinely enjoy meeting any of these guys at a party. Mechanics aside, the organizer did a great job rounding up quality nerds.

For $9, it’s worth a try both for the novelty and for the reserved front row seats for the main Nerd Nite event. If your name is in the first third of the alphabet, lie. For this purpose, you’re Miranda. Now go meet some charming single nerds. 

It’s a good week for video gamers. You can check out the SXSWi Gaming Expo Happy Hour (which includes a chance to win a SXSWi badge) or hunker down for an EVE Online LAN party. There are also plenty of excuses for board games as well as the return of the ever awesome Monthly Sci-Fi and Fantasy Social at the Draught House.

Werewolves of the Dark Arts
Jan. 10, 7:00 p.m.
Whose Turn Is It? Games
2708 S Lamar Blvd #100b
Join Austin’s Redditors for some offline fun playing the ever popular game Werewolves of the Dark Arts. It’s a fun, fast, social game that’s easy to learn while also socializing with your fellow geeks.

Austin Lord of the Rings Meetup
Jan. 10, 7:00 p.m.
Join to learn the location
What can I say about the Lord of the Rings group? Too much: We follow the books, movies, actors, directors. We sometimes deviate onto other topics, but thats because a LOTR's person was/is in it. We have lots of fun of course conversing about everything.

Monthly Sci-Fi and Fantasy Social
Jan. 11, 7:00 p.m.
Draught House Pub & Brewery
4112 Medical Pkwy
Join the Austin Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club for their laid back monthly pub night.

EVE Online LAN Party
Jan. 12, 1:00 p.m.
Mothership Books and Games
2121 West Parmer Lane #119
This month for Austin's Meetup, we are having another LAN party at Mothership Books and Games. It's a great opportunity to meet fellow EVE Online players face to face, ask those burning questions you've always had, help a few players in need and have a good time with fellow EVE players while you do it. The Meetup is open to any level of player including the just curious and new players.

Nocturnis-Amtgard Park Day
Jan. 12, 2:30 p.m.
Brushy Creek Park
3300 Brushy Creek Rd
Cedar Park, TX
If the SCA has too much authenticity and LARP’s don’t let you get violent enough, check out this boffer sword fighting group. If you’re not familiar, boffer swords are usually made from PVC coated with foam and duct tape with a nice cloth cover.  People get together to beat on one another, drink and go camping. If you’re an outdoorsy geek looking for some good exercise, check them out.

Lord of the Rings Themed Improv
Jan. 12, 8:00 p.m.
Hideout Theatre
617 Congress Ave
Each week professional improvisers will play in a different fictional world and this week is LORD OF THE RINGS! The show will be guided at every turn by audience suggestions, anecdotes, sarcastic comments and all the passion you have for these characters and stories. Help us plumb the psychological depths of Harry Potter, investigate the sociological implications of the Hunger Games, and have Legolas and Aragorn make out with each other at Mount Doom.

Geeks Who Drink Meetup
Jan. 12, 9:00 p.m.
Opal Divine’s Marina
12709 Mopac
Trivia lovers can join a team for the chance to show off their smarts and win free drinks.

Girl Geeks of Austin Nerdy Knitting and Fiber Arts
Jan. 14, 7:00 p.m.
Genuine Joe’s Coffee House
2001 W. Anderson Lane
Enjoy a laid back night of knitting, crochet, embroidery, or whatever fibercraft you love in the company of your fellow nerd girls.

SXSWi Gaming Expo Happy Hour
Jan 15, 5:00 p.m.
Kung Fu Saloon
510 Rio Grande St.
We're celebrating the upcoming 2013 season of the SXSW Gaming Expo, at Kung Fu Saloon.
Come hang out and play classic arcade games, have some great conversation with local game developers and good friends, and have a few drinks on us! Think you are Austin's Skeeball champ? Come participate in a tourney, and win a SXSW Interactive Badge! For more info on the SXSW Gaming Expo,  please visit http://sxsw.com/gaming

Pathfinder Society Meetup
Jan. 14, 7:00 p.m.
Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy
6111 Burnet Rd.
Looking for some new faces around the gaming table?  Delve into ancient dungeons, uncover lost knowledge, and advance the secret goals of your faction - whether it be the freedom-fighting Andorans, the good-hearted Silver Crusade, the shady dealings of the Sczarni, or the strict laws of Cheliax - and gain experience and loot for your character no matter where you game!

South Austin Game Night and Boards and Brews Meetup
Jan. 15, 6:00 p.m.
Rockin Tomato
3003 S. Lamar
This weekly gathering of gamers regularly hosts over 40 people playing a dozen different games. New people are always welcome.

Girl Geeks of Austin Board Games and Brews
Jan. 15, 7:00 p.m.
Black Star Co-Op
7020 Easy Wind Dr
Not in the mood for mixed company? Enjoy some microbrewery beers along with Euro style boardgames in the company of your fellow geek girls.


Want to see your event listed? Post the date, a current link and a good reason why your event belongs in This Week in Geek on the Facebook group, This Week in Geek.

Mount Bonnell, also called Covert Park, is a mere 5 acres in the Austin Parks Department stable of outdoor treats, but it’s one certainly worth visiting, preferably around sunset. Set 780 feet above sea level, Mount Bonnell is hardly a “mount,” but it provides beautiful views of the Colorado River, the sunset over the greater city and the mansions that litter the waterfront and hills above it.

Mount Bonnell has been a tourist destination since the 1850s and was designated a Texas Historic Landmark in 1969. The lone trail in the park goes up what feels like thousands of stairs to the lookout and then slopes down back to the parking area to make a loop. The stairs are steep and well worn, so bring a comfortable pair of shoes with good tread and possibly an oxygen tank.

According to local legend, Mount Bonnell was once known as Antoinette’s Leap, after a young woman who jumped from the height to escape Indian capture. The current name is attributed to either George W. Bonnell, publisher of the mid-19th Century newspaper, The Texas Sentinel; or Joseph Bonnell, a captain in the Texas War for Independence. The park’s official name is for Frank M. Covert Sr., who donated the land to the City of Austin.

If you’re looking for solitude, atop Mount Bonnell is not the place to be. The lookout and area surrounding it provide a destination for tourists, locals and those who want to work out by running up and down the stairs. I’ve never visited when there have been less than a dozen people, but if you walk down the hill from the lookout, there is more space, and it’s possible to at least have a little outcropping to yourself.

A trip to Mount Bonnell can hardly be called a Day Trip; even the most interested person would have trouble finding more than a couple of hours of activity here. However, Mayfield Park is right around the corner, providing a few hiking trails and a great deal of peacocks, and the Dry Creek Café, one of the best dive bars in the city, is right around the other corner, providing cheap cans of beer, borrowed coozies and view of the sunset from their rooftop deck that rivals the one on Mount Bonnell. Combine the three activities together and you have a pretty pleasant afternoon.

This week, Door64 presents both downtown and north Austin networking groups for people interested in STEM (science, tech, engineering and math) careers, the folks at SXSWi get a head start with their own gaming happy hour, Capital Factory hosts another hackathon, and there are oodles of user groups.

SXSWi Gaming Expo Happy Hour
Jan. 15, 5:00 p.m.
Kung Fu Saloon
510 Rio Grande St
We're celebrating the upcoming 2013 season of the SXSW Gaming Expo, at Kung Fu Saloon.
Come hang out and play classic arcade games, have some great conversation with local game developers and good friends, and have a few drinks on us! Think you are Austin's Skeeball champ? Come participate in a tourney, and win a SXSW Interactive Badge! For more info on the SXSW Gaming Expo,  please visit http://sxsw.com/gaming

Austin Cloud User Group
Jan. 15, 6:00 p.m.
Pervasive Software
12365-B Riata Trace Parkway
Come join us for the next Austin Cloud User Group meeting.  If you are interested in cloud computing, and somewhat close to Austin, this is the group for you!  All are welcome.

QA SIG North - Quality Assurance in the Cloud
Jan. 16, Noon
Planview
8300 N Mopac Expy
Many of us are working at businesses using websites and other services via cloud providers such as Amazon and Rackspace. Testing in these environments, while similar to traditional software, can be very different as well. For example, testing individual server instances as opposed to black box testing as a user is one strategy for driving automation that does not become brittle and fail. How do you approach testing in the cloud, and how does it differ from what you've done in the past? Come join us for a lively discussion!

Door64 North STEM Happy Hour
Jan. 16, 5:30 p.m.
The Park at The Domain
11601 Domain Drive
All science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) professionals are welcome and are invited to the next Door64 Happy Hour in north Austin. We ask that professionals in unrelated fields, including sales, real estate, financial planning and career coaches, please respect the technical focus of the happy hours, and consider some of the other door64 events.  Recruiters are welcome, but are asked to make a small contribution for their tickets to help offset the cost of the event, and are asked to consider including title sponsorships and job fair tables in their recruiting plans.  Recruiters will receive a special name badge, clearly identifying themselves.

Austin Drupal Users Group
Jan. 16, 7:00 p.m.
Capital Factory (Omni Hotel Building)
701 Brazos Street, 16th Floor
This month we've got an action-packed session for Drupal themers. Come see Ian Carrico give a demonstration of Sass, Compass, the Aurora base theme and a suite of Compass extensions that together form one heck of a theming toolset. Although not limited to mobile sites, this is a must-see for people interested in improving their responsive design toolkit.

Austin ISSA Meeting
Jan. 17, 11:30 a.m.
Microsoft Technology Center
Quarry Oaks 2, 10900 Stonelake Blvd, Suite 225
Arm your security program. Become the hunter, not a target. The presentation will focus on how inter-organizational teams might cooperate to build threat intelligence faster and more reliably. The Texas CISO Council will be used as an example of how a Security Intelligence Community has been formed to foster the cooperation and active participation of prominent security groups. The results are in and they paint a grim picture.  Incident reports show a trend of non-existent to extremely delayed detection. Security Programs are reactive and attackers have the edge.  If we are to turn the tide, we must change the rules and work together in a brand new way.

Door64 Downtown Happy Hour
Jan. 17, 5:30 p.m.
Annie's Cafe & Bar
319 Congress Ave
If you want all of Door64’s networking goodness but don’t want to drive up north, enjoy their downtown happy hour full of STEM career goodness.

Drupal Dojo
Jan. 17, 7:00 p.m.
Mangia Pizza
8012 Mesa Drive
Theme: The Drupal Dojo is for anyone interested in hanging out with other Drupalistas in a "hive mind" environment. There is no set topic or presenter so bring your laptop, a pet project and an appetite.

Node.js Hack-a-thon with Microsoft BizSpark
Jan. 19, 9:00 a.m.
Capital Factory (Omni Hotel Building)
701 Brazos Street, 16th Floor
Node Bootcamp is a free event for developers and designers who want to learn Node.JS from the ground up with hands-on instruction from Node experts at Microsoft. No prior Node experience is necessary to attend. At Node Bootcamp you’ll learn how to build your first Node application from scratch, how to work with popular Node.JS development tools and editors, how to work with popular 3rd party Node frameworks like Express and Socket.IO, and how to deploy your applications to production hosting environments. Breakfast, lunch and snacks will be provided, courtesy of Microsoft.

Austin Windows App Developers Code Cafe
Jan. 19, 11:00 a.m.
Cherrywood Coffee House
1400 E. 38 1/2 St
Code to your heart’s content. It’s the perfect opportunity to get underway, or to finish that app you’ve already started. Ideally you'll be working on a Windows 8 app, but feel free to come by if you just want to see what all the fuss is about. Hang out with us all day or just come for a few hours. There's not obligation to be there early or stay all day. Haven't started an app yet? Join 30-to-Launch to get the inspiration you need! Build and launch your app in 30 days. Come cowork with us while you're at it!

Back before the Austin trailer food boom, some dozen or so years ago, the offerings from vendors on wheels were more limited indeed. Instead of fusions you never dreamed of that make your mouth water, tasty cuisines from around the world and confections like gourmet doughnuts the size of a spare tire, there was the humble taco trailer.

And there still is. In my neighborhood – the East Oltorf/Riverside area that is likely to be nicknamed South Shore (aka "SoSo," alas) – that's largely what we have. Back in the 1990s, when you wanted trailer tacos the cry was, "go east." It's part of where the trailer food movement originated and remains one of my signal local eating experiences.

In the '90s, it was near tradition with a friend to head eastward on Riverside after last call for tacos at the Al Pastor trailer in the large lot of the plaza on the south side of Riverside between Parker Lane and Royal Crest Drive. Not only were their al pastor tacos morsels of magnificence, flecked with cilantro and wrapped in the warm blanket of a tortilla heated by a brief flash on the grill, but it also served a verde sauce whose heat was like an ember, lingering on the taste buds even after I'd arrived home for the night.

My current abode is just down the street from Tacos Ricos (2225 E. Oltorf at Douglas in the parking lot of the Oltorf Food Mart). All my taco trailer needs are now just a stroll away.

Much as I enjoy fusions and high cuisine, my appetite has a strong appreciation for "people's food." It's all about taking cheap and common ingredients and making them tasty and filling; stuff you can whip up at home, but maybe that much better cooked by another, and for a cost that's just a bit more than buying the ingredients yourself.

I may be able to whip up some mighty good breakfast tacos at home, yet they just don't compare with those prepared seven mornings a week by Maria, sometimes assisted by her husband Rico, proprietors of the trailer that bears his name. I assess my breakfast tacos by what I call the Tamale House standard for where I first became seduced by the delights of this decidedly Texan meal.

By the time I moved to Austin in 1989, the original Tamale House that was located on the northeast block at Congress and Cesar Chavez was gone and replaced by one of downtown's original modern highrises that stands there today. But in typical Austin fashion I heard many extol its praises after my arrival here.

As word had it, the buyout to make way for the office building in the 1980s enabled the Valera family, who has already been serving Mexican fare to Austinites for three generations, to open three new Tamale Houses: One at 2825 Guadalupe where the Drag hits 29th St. (now the Taco Shack), where I became addicted to the breakfast taco when I worked and lived a block or so away after I landed in this town. There was another on College Ave. off South Congress where Lucy's Fried Chicken is now cooking up a Southern food storm on the local food scene. And the remaining Tamale House No. 3 from the trio at 5003 Airport. Early last year a new Tamale House opened at 1707 East Sixth, hopefully assuring this long local breakfast tradition will outlast any gentrification. After all, as one Yelp reviewer puts it so well, their food is "amazeballs."

So my first introduction to the breakfast taco set expectations that the primary stuffing of fluffy fried eggs be all but overflowing. My standard combo includes bacon, potatoes and cheese (sometimes I switch out the bacon for sausage), most often with another of bean, cheese and avocado. For just a few bucks I am well sated.

And when I first ordered that up from Tacos Ricos some three years ago, I found I was luckily living a short walk up the street from a superior Mexican food trailer. Soon after I sampled the al pastor and it nicely passed muster. At least once a week I'll have one of their hearty burritos or tortas. They also do a pretty good burger and fries. Their green sauce may not have the long lingering burn of that at Al Pastor, but it carries a tangy accent that conveys its merits.

I'm almost ashamed to say I'm such a creature of habit that it took me more than two years to discover what I consider Tacos Ricos' true treasure: an utterly delightful beef barbacoa. Succulently spiced, it gracefully crumbles and melts as it hits the palate, and is super yummy within any of the basic orders the trailer serves.

When a friend who grew up in South Texas recently stayed with me for a week on his return to Austin from stints in other points around the nation, I called on his close-to-the-border reared taste buds as a test case to confirm my affection for this neighborhood joint. He agreed that the breakfast tacos rocked and was also wowed by the barbacoa. The folks of all ages and stripes who keep Tacos Ricos hopping from early morning to mid afternoon and then dinnertime until after the bars close attest to its appeal.

Yeah, the Spanglish mode of communication from both sides of the window sometimes results in glitched orders, but no matter. I appreciate how the taco trailer enables immigrants to integrate themselves by starting their own business and employing fellow newcomers. And for all the cornucopia of comestibles being served up from trailers and trucks all around town, the taqueria on tires remains an essential aspect of life, as it always should be.

To many, “leadership” is like the old test for obscenity – you might not be able to describe it, but you’ll know it when you see it. A University of Texas professor is aiming to take the mystery out of what makes a good leader with a new book being published this month.

“Habits of Leadership,” a 50-page mini e-book, will be released Jan. 29 by Perigree Books, a division of Penguin, for e-readers like Kindle, Nook and iBook.

“The book is designed for people who do not have a background in psychology but are interested in improving their leadership ability,” said the book’s author Art Markman, a UT Psychology professor and author of “Smart Thinking.” “So, the book is aimed at helping people with their careers and with understanding their strengths and weaknesses as leaders.”

The book offers readers the opportunity to assess aspects of their personalities and then examines how those characteristics influence their abilities as leaders and innovators and how they can become better ones. One thing Markman found is that the most effective innovators seem to share two characteristics – an openness to new experience and being high in need for cognition, meaning they put themselves into positions where they’re forced to think.

“People with this combination of traits generally explore new ideas in depth,” Markman said. “That helps them to make new and interesting connections when they are faced with a difficult problem.”

The book emerged from part of a class Markman teaches for Procter & Gamble called Achieving Peak Performance, which examines the relationship between personality characteristics and leadership performance. His aim in publishing the book is to help people learn not only about themselves but also the people around them.

“It is unfortunate that we don't teach people much about psychology, and then we ask them to think for a living and to influence other people,” Markman said.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet to becoming a good leader; the key point, Markman said, is to understand the habits your personality creates.

“It is important to understand when those habits are helping you to be an effective leader and when they are getting in your way,” he said. “When your personality has focused you on habits that are not good for leadership, then you need to find ways to change those habits.”

Sources say Lance Armstrong came clean to Oprah Winfrey about his doping during an interview with her here in Austin on Monday. No surprise, really. The Oprah or Barbara Walters confessional is by now a modern American public relations ritual.

Credit: 

Photo by jdegengardt on Flickr

I will reserve full final judgement until the show airs on Thursday (1/17), but his admission already feels like it's too little and way too late. The damage is done, it's considerable and seems irreparable. Finally - finally!– admitting that, yes, he doped (big time) just won't repair his shredded rep as far as this former admirer is concerned. It's not even so much the doping, per se – we've all become at least a bit inured to the use of performance-enhancing drugs in contemporary sports – but the attitude he displayed as he did it while vehemently insisting that he didn't that has debased his stature beyond redemption in my eyes.

Although there's no comparison when it comes to athletic abilities (trust me...), as I would ride my bike around (what was then) Town Lake while Lance rode to further and greater fame and accomplishments every year in the Tour de France, it seemed kind of cool to be pedaling in the same city as a historic bike-riding champion. I could feel like he was one of us and savor a teeny-tiny bask in the reflected glory he brought to Austin. He inspired me to ride a bit harder and further.

By the time Armstrong came within cycling distance of being the all-time Tour record holder, I shared the excitement of a local boy making sports history and started watching the race on TV almost daily. There was a delightful thrill to seeing him break from the peloton that energized me.

I recall reading my friend Michael Hall's 2001 article in Texas Monthly in which he cleverly rode with Arnstrong around town. It felt to me like Mike was giving Armstrong every benefit of a doubt against mounting suspicions. As much as the chorus of doubters Hall quoted seemed weighty to the point of being convincing, I still wanted to believe Lance's stunning athleticism was not enhanced.

In a later open letter to Armstrong urging him to tell the truth about doping in the Monthly some two years ago, Hall reports that Lance hated his article, which points to the biggest stains within this whole sordid affair: Not merely the lying and cheating, but rather the cussed arrogance that the cyclist displayed about it all, the fierce manner in which he insisted he was clean, plus the umbrage directed at his accusers. And there's also the alleged bullying of his teammates to dope as well and to keep his dirty secret under wraps recounted in the New York Times series last October that finally broke open the floodgates of deception.

In short, Armstrong seems like a crassly deceitful, self-important jerk. And it's doubtful he will display sufficient contrition much less any personal growth from owning up to his misdeeds on Thursday in what is clearly a PR damage control tactic rather than a "come to Jesus" moment of sincere regret. His reported hope that the move could get his ban from competitive cycling lifted and even regain him his titles only underscores the apparent falsity of it all. Any argument of justification that everyone else was doping is belied as a pile of crap by the magnitude of his own doping scheme while playing the angrily aggrieved party whenever questions and accusations arose.

Armstrong still boasts the undeniably admirable fact that he beat cancer in his plus column. But all the rest even sullies his efforts through the Livestrong Foundation to help others overcome the disease. The metaphorical tumors within his personality and the man's lack of any integrity have, for me, damaged his stature beyond repair. As soon as I type the period at the end of this sentence, I'm tossing my yellow Livestrong wristband in the trash.

The number of options for local, organic and sustainably grown food available here in Austin just continues to grow. We have farmers markets, locally stocked grocery stores, health-touting chains and other choices coming down the pipeline as well. With all that access to fresh produce, it’s no wonder Austin was named one of the healthiest cities in the country thanks to our consumption of whole foods.

We’ve put together a round-up of some of the new, expanding and yet-to-come initiatives that aim to keep Austin eating green.

HOPE Farmers Market moves to Plaza Saltillo

HOPE, the little farmers market that could, has been hosting local vendors, artists and crafters, as well as music and programs like a bike repair shop, for three years in the small space at Pine Street Station at 5th and Waller. Beginning in March, as the market continues to change and grow, it’ll move down the street to Plaza Saltillo.

“The eccentric, funky nature of Pine Street Station lent itself well to this first, amazing phase of HOPE,” said Heather Frambach, community outreach manager for the market. “Yet as the cultural landscape of Austin, and particularly East Austin, continues to rapidly grow and change, HOPE has affirmatively decided to take a hard look at itself and its role in the East Austin community.”

HOPE has been talking to residents, attending community meetings and forming partnerships to help define their direction, and as a result, “changes have been taking place within the market, including engaging with local gardeners to sell produce grown in East Austin and expanded music offerings that reflect the neighborhood's cultural roots in Tejano and conjunto groups,” Frambach added.

Although Plaza Saltillo is a short three blocks from Pine Street Station, Frambach said her group feels it will be a physical and symbolic relocation, adding, “we believe that as a beautiful and potent space that figures largely in the neighborhood's history it is ideal for representing HOPE's reboot as an inclusive and highly visible community project.”

In addition to the relocation, HOPE recently started accepting EBT cards as payment (from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and is conducting a pilot project called the HOPE Farm Stand, which sources surplus produce from East Austin farms and gardens that would otherwise go to waste and is instead sold at an affordable price at the market.

“I see the Farm Stand as a great way to both increase access to affordable, high-quality food in East Austin as well as engage with neighborhood gardeners from different backgrounds whose crops and cultivation techniques reflect the values of community self-care we strive for,” Frambach said.

CitySprout, a Food-Based Social Marketplace, Moves to Austin

A new service that started in Massachusetts expanded to Austin recently. CitySprout is an online, social marketplace connecting customers to local food. Customers enter their ZIP code at citysprout.com to join “communities” (groups of people who live near one another and are interested in receiving local food offers) near them or start their own. Farmers and local food producers then use CitySprout to find communities near their location and post food offers that the community can opt to purchase and which will then be delivered at a predetermined time and location. Farmers set their own prices and CitySprout just takes a relatively small (15 percent) slice off the top.

“We asked our area farmers many questions about what challenges they faced, and asked ourselves how technology could help small farms and local food producers to meet these challenges,” said Jesse Mayhew, CitySprout director of communications.

Although the program is available around the country, CitySprout is focusing its promotional efforts on Austin thanks to our year-round growing season, abundant and highly regarded local agriculture and passionate-about-food population.

“It's our hope that the same Austin area farmers that frequent Austin's farmers markets will find CitySprout to be an exciting new platform,” Mayhew said. “Many farmers find CitySprout more convenient than a farmers market in that we take the speculation out of things. Through CitySprout, farmers only need to pack up and transport what they have already sold.”

For the consumer, unlike the CSA or “farm share” model, there is no upfront prepayment, membership fee or commitment.

“You can purchase your weekly vegetables one week, and skip it the next if you are going to be out of town,” Mayhew added. “CitySprout community members also can also enjoy a wide variety of farmers and food producers. In Austin alone, we recently received food producer applications from a local honey farmer, as well as a producer of artisanal jams.”

in.gredients Hits Its Six-Month Mark

The zero waste, anti-packaging East Austin grocery store in.gredients, 2610 Manor Road, opened in August 2012 and owners are “happy with how our business is growing and changing,” said Chelsea Davis, a store representative.

“There are a lot of exciting things happening in 2013, and we hope to build more community around sustainable food and mindful shopping,” she added. “We're looking to host more community events, partnering with some great Austin organizations.”

in.gredients is dedicated to not only sustainable food sourcing but also to sustainable business practices in the store. Shoppers bring their own containers and bags, purchase what they need and leave no waste, as their containers can be used again next time.

“By shopping at in.gredients you can leave the store without any unnecessary food or packaging, which lowers food waste and the amount of garbage you send to the landfill,” Davis said.

The store also aims to be a community gathering place, where folks can grab a snack, a beer and have a seat on the front patio. The patio also features an Urban Patchwork farm, which grows produce sold in the store, and neighbors can bring in their backyard produce for sale as well.

“We are a blend of a grocery store, convenience store and hang out spot. At in.gredients you can grab a pint of beer, get your shopping done and then relax outside on the porch,” Davis said. “Also, by shopping at in.gredients you are supporting a local business, with the money going back into the community. We work hard to source a majority of our products from local farms, ranchers and vendors. When you shop at in.gredients, your dollar stays in Austin.”

Wheatsville Announces Details of Second Store

As we reported earlier this month, Wheatsville has provided a few more details about their second store, a long-desired South Austin location at South Lamar and Ben White. The store will feature an expanded deli, demonstration areas and a bakery, as well as expanded shopping square footage. For more information, see our full story here.

“We think CSAs and farmers markets are great places to buy local products. As a community owned co-op we want to give our customers the same opportunity for farm fresh, interesting, locally made products the other six days of the week,” said Raquel Dadomo, Wheatsville’s brand manager. “By giving farmers and vendors a reliable market, we can help increase the amount of locally produced food that’s produced in and around Austin.”

Highland Mall Adds a Farmers Market

As we reported in early December, Barton Creek Farmers Market has expanded to a new location, Sundays in the parking lot of the Highland Mall. The farmers market is part of a plan from Austin Community College (which owns the mall) to revitalize the area, making it a walkable live, work, play, study destination for ACC students and others. Read the full store here.

Chains Keep on Coming

In addition to the smaller options and farmers markets, there will be additional big players entering the Austin organic market this year. Trader Joe’s has announced plans for its first Austin-area store in the Seaholm development, a revitalization project planned for the old Seaholm Power Plant, which will break ground in July.

Will all of these new additions, 2013 looks to be a banner year for Austinites to eat healthy and local.

In this inaugural edition of "The Top 10 Report," our fair city scores on two seemingly disparate lists of America's most and best.

Women's Health magazine recently rated Austin as the eighth healthiest city in America. The magazine also included the Ann and Roy Butler hike and bike trail around Lady Bird Lake as one of the nation's top 10 nature runs, noting how it's:

“[T]he perfect place to train for a triathlon – or just to do a lot of different activities. From running around the town lake to biking around Zilker Park to even going for a swim in the waters of Barton Springs, this is the place to train. You’ll get 10 miles of working out!”

At the same time, we also won the #5 spot on the 25 Drunkest Cities of 2012 as determined by The Daily Beast. Yep, we consume an average of 14.5 alcoholic drinks per month and then sweat out the toxins with a run, swim or bike ride to stay healthy. Way to go Team Austin!

In further list news, our city got bumped from the top spot it held last month in the On Numbers Economic Indexby Oklahoma City. And Food & Wine magazine included downtown's The Backspace as one of its 50 Best Pizza Places in the U.S.

Photo by midwestnerd on Flickr

Quick, Austin movie buffs, what was the first movie filmed in Austin that received national distribution?  Richard Linklater’s 1991 coming-of-age film "Slacker?" Nope, too recent.  Tobe Hooper’s 1974 gorefest "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?" You’re getting closer, but you’re still off by decades.  Ever hear of "Their Lives by a Slender Thread?"  Don’t feel bad if you haven’t, there’s an excellent chance that your grandparents haven’t either.  It might even have eluded the notice of your great-grandparents, given its 1913 release.  That’s right, the Austin movie industry’s roots date back a full century.

Austin's first filmmakers, Paul (left) and W. Hope Tilley at work in their studio.

When Illinois native Paul Tilley lost his job with the Gaskill and Munday Carnival band in Charleston, South Carolina in 1906, he decided to try his hand at something other than music.  He and another unemployed musician acquired several reels of motion picture film, bought a second-hand projector, and borrowed enough chairs to open a crude theater.  Paul’s older brother Hope joined in.  Years later Hope recalled showing the serialized silent classic "The Perils of Pauline."“[We showed] Pauline overcoming all her perils for a couple of weeks and went broke.”

Undeterred, the Tilley brothers traveled to central Texas and began circulating among several towns showing movies, slides and advertisements.  Along the way they acquired a camera.  Near the Alamo in San Antonio they erected a screen on a large pole and invited audiences to watch the films they had produced.  This business plan worked well until a nearby building owner painted the side of his building white, installed a projector atop the building opposite and, with his impressively large moving images, lured away the Tilleys’ customers.

Hope Tilley and his camera (from Lone Star Picture Shows, by Richard Schroeder, Texas A&M University Press, 2001).

Paul and Hope persisted in San Antonio for several years, making short films to show along with those purchased from other aspiring filmmakers.  They stored their equipment in their grandfather’s garage, but when he died in 1911 they packed up and moved to Austin.  Not only the old man’s death spurred the move.  A nascent industry still trying to define itself was making life difficult for small filmmakers by limiting the sale of perforated film to those purchasing a license from the Motion Pictures Patents Company.  The brothers evaded the stricture by ordering film from France.  They evidently believed that detection of their subterfuge would be less likely in Austin.

Once settled in Austin, the Tilleys rented space above the Casino Theatre at 702 Congress Avenue and founded the Texas Bioscope Company, the city’s first movie studio.  The company not only produced its own short films, but offered its services to anyone wishing to have something recorded for posterity.  Families were a particular target.  As one advertisement pointed out, home movies provided “the only real way to record the little one’s antics for future viewing.”  The Tilleys’ own films varied from slides to cartoons, from advertisements to newsreels and even short comedies.  One of the latter featured bank robber Skinny Pryor rushing out of the American National Bank at Sixth and Congress and being comically chased up the Avenue to the Capitol grounds.

Charles C. "Cash and Carry" Pyle, the smooth-talking dreamer whose extravagant spending habits killed the Tilley brothers' filmmaking dreams.

Enter one Charles C. “Cash and Carry” Pyle, a smooth-talking fellow Illinoisan and self-described “film production expert.”  Pyle later gained fame when he convinced football star Red Grange to spurn college and turn pro, a move that led biographer Jim Reisler to label him “America’s first sports agent.”  Reisler also wrote that his subject “had big ideas, but clearly was no businessman.  He also had oceans of chutzpah and a knack for quickly getting back on his feet without looking back.”  In January 1913 Pyle teamed up with the Tilley brothers to form the Satex Film Company of Austin, the name “Satex” being either an anagram of “Texas” or an abbreviation of "San Antonio, Texas." His pitch had convinced 25 Austin businessmen, a group that included the Casino Theatre owner, to invest $1,000 each.  Pyle would receive $50 a week to manage the company and direct its films, Hope would operate the camera and Paul would serve as film technician.

Actress Martha Russell, who was hired by her husband Charles Pyle to be the Satex Film Company's leading lady.

One factor that likely enhanced Pyle’s appeal to the Tilley brothers was his wife, actress Martha Russell.  Charles and Martha had married in 1911 at a time when Russell was establishing herself with the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, a Chicago-based studio that included Charlie Chaplin among its stable of actors.  Russell made nine films with Essanay in 1912 before signing on with Satex at a salary of $150 a week.  Other hires included leading man Robert Kelly, character actors Leopold Lane, William H. Barwald and Virginia Duncan, and several others.

In addition to being America’s first sports agent, Charles Pyle might also have been one of the film industry’s first publicity agents.  This notice in the April 19, 1913 edition of the El Paso Herald certainly bears the stamp of a canny promoter:

"Few theatrical stars or photoplayers have risen to prominence with more meteoric headway than has Miss Martha Russell, leading woman now with the Satex Film Company of Austin, Texas.  Besides being a dramatic and vaudeville star Miss Russell holds the honor of being one of the most popular photoplayers of the great army of actors and actresses who appear upon the screen."

And if Pyle was behind this quote in the January 15, 1913 New York Dramatic Mirror, he earns points for false modesty:

"It is hard to be the husband of a celebrity.  Everybody mentions Charles C. Pyle as 'Martha Russell’s husband,' but we shall try to do better."

On behalf of Satex, Pyle and the Tilleys rented space in the Joseph Goodman Building at 13th and Lavaca streets.  An outdoor stage was constructed in front of the building; a sheet of muslin draped overhead helped cut glare to improve lighting.  With the confidence engendered by their $25,000 bankroll, the Tilleys began filming three-reel pictures rather than the one-reelers that most other companies were producing at the time.  Satex became the first studio south of Saint Louis to produce these longer films.

The Joseph Goodman Building at 13th and Lavaca, home in 1913 to the Satex Film Company, Austin's first movie studio.

By late spring of 1913 Satex had completed three films, all starring Martha Russell and Robert Kelly.  Pyle negotiated a distribution deal with Warners Features and in quick succession "Mexican Conspiracy Outgeneraled,""Their Lives by a Single Thread" and "The Kentucky Feud" received nationwide release.  No footage has survived the ravages of time so we can only guess at the look of the pictures.  But the Tilleys and Pyle strove hard to produce films that would thrill a 1913 audience.  According to the March 22, 1913 Evening Standard of Ogden, Utah, "Their Lives by a Single Thread" included a scene with leading man Robert Kelly being flung over the side of a precipice.  He could be reached only by lowering a large iron bucket on an aerial cable.  “To make the picture realistic,” Russell, whose character aims to save Kelly’s, was placed in the bucket and lifted high into the air to reach Kelly.  Once she retrieved Kelly the floor of the bucket swung open, Russell saving herself by clinging to its side with Kelly working feverishly to reattach the floor.

1913 advertisement promoting Mexican Conspiracy Outgeneraled.

The other two Satex pictures also fit within the action/adventure genre.  In Mexican Conspiracy Outgeneraled, Russell played a detective of the Tinkerton Detective Agency named Martha Langley.  Langley is sent to Mexico to catch Karr, a Mexican rebel spy who has stolen money from a Wall Street banker named Tipps, played by Kelly.  The heroine naturally falls into Karr’s hands but is clever enough to escape.  She then secures proof of Karr’s complicity in the murder of a Mexican general, thereby saving Tipps, who had been accused of the crime.  A happy ending results when Tipps and Langley fall in love, marry, and have a beautiful baby boy.

The Kentucky Feud involves one of those unbelievable contrivances that still drives the plots of many Hollywood films.  A young mother is falsely accused by her husband of unseemly conduct with a former beau.  She runs off with her daughter to join an opera company but dies, leaving her daughter in the care of the Cain family of Kentucky.   Meanwhile, the abandoned husband, who is from the Afton family, adopts a son and moves to Kentucky.  The son grows up, falls in love with the daughter and successfully proposes marriage.  But wouldn’t you know, a disputed sheriff’s election results in a feud between the Cains and the Aftons.  A gunfight breaks out at the wedding but somehow the combatants realize the family connection between the young lovers and the shootin’ irons are tossed aside.  All live happily ever after except, of course, the poor souls shot in the gun battle.

Hope Tilley filming for Satex (from Lone Star Picture Shows, by Richard Schroeder, Texas A&M University Press, 2001).

While the Tilleys filmed much of these three pictures in and around Austin, they also shot on location in Mexico.  Perhaps unaccustomed to the activities of a film crew, Mexican authorities expressed alarm and indignation at the staging of a particularly noisy gun battle.  After hauling the crew off to jail, Mexican police insisted that the Tilleys give up their film.  Upon securing their release by yielding some nonessential footage, the brothers hastened back to Texas.

Unfortunately for the Tilleys and their film company, Charlie Pyle spent his firm’s money lavishly down in Mexico.  Budgeted at $3,000, Their Lives by a Single Thread cost Satex $5,300 to produce.  When suspicious investors investigated and found that Pyle could not account for another several thousand dollars they sued.  Satex went belly-up before the end of 1913.  Charles and Martha quietly slipped out of town in June and drove to New York via Chicago in a new Haynes touring car.  A notice in The Moving Picture World predicted “Miss Russell, in all probability, will make New York her headquarters for some time to come.”  The following year Martha directed Victims of Divorce for a new film company founded by Charles.  Within months of the picture’s release the couple’s marriage had dissolved.

Charles Pyle and Martha Russell left Austin in June 1913 in a Haynes touring car like the one pictured here, leaving behind two dozen angry investors and a disappointed pair of Tilley brothers.

With admirable persistence, Hope Tilley attempted to organize a new film studio in Austin but couldn’t interest enough investors.  He quit the film business for good and set up shop as a music teacher, a profession he adhered to throughout the rest of his life.  Paul left show business as well to open a successful commercial sign painting company.

If you’ve ever seen Quentin Tarantino’s "Grindhouse" or Richard Linkalater’s "Dazed and Confused," you’ve probably caught yourself watching the background scenery for Austin landmarks.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the Tilley brothers’ 1913 films available for similar purpose?  While we can’t watch "Their Lives by a Single Thread" or "The Kentucky Feud" we do have a Tilley legacy almost as good.  Hope Tilley may have retired as a professional filmmaker after the 1913 fiasco with Satex, but he didn’t put his camera away for good.  Fortunately for us, Hope continued to shoot home movies around Austin for several decades.  This footage may be viewed at the website of Texas Archive of the Moving Image.  Of particular note is W. H. Tilley Collection number 1, an eleven minute compilation of film shot during the 1910s and 1920s.  I imagine Hope would feel vindicated to know that, after more than a century, people still watch his motion pictures.

This week, you have three excuses to watch cheesy movies with your fellow geeks, with the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" down south, "Planet of the Apes" up north, and a bad movie marathon in the middle. If you’d prefer live entertainment, check out “Oh, Science!” with the Gnap theater or the Institution Theater’s four day Geek themed Improv-O-Rama. In between, there are also plenty of excuses for board games, including a singles board game night for people in their 20-30’s.

Sci-Fi Movie Meetup
Jan. 17, 8:00 p.m.
Join to learn the location
This is our second meetup of the month... We watch typically bad but sometimes okay Sci Fi and laugh a lot at the movies & each other. Bring any movies you like and we'll vote on which one to watch. Snacks and sodas provided.

Gnap Theater Presents, “Oh, Science!”
Jan. 18, 8:00 p.m.
Salvage Vanguard Theater
2803 Manor Rd
Performing since 2009 and hosting their own show since 2010, Oh, Science! is one of ColdTowne theater's veteran house troupes.  They have also performed throughout Austin, including at The Hideout Theater, The Lair Theater and the Hyde Park Theater’s fringe festival, FronteraFest.  Oh, Science! made its New York City debut at the 2011 Del Close Marathon and performed there in 2012 as well.  You can follow them at facebook.com/ohscience.

Nocturnis-Amtgard Park Day
Jan. 19, 2:30 p.m.
Brushy Creek Park
3300 Brushy Creek Rd
Cedar Park, TX
If the SCA has too much authenticity and LARP’s don’t let you get violent enough, check out this boffer sword fighting group. If you’re not familiar, boffer swords are usually made from PVC coated with foam and duct tape with a nice cloth cover.  People get together to beat on one another, drink, and go camping. If you’re an outdoorsy geek looking for some good exercise, check them out.

20’s and 30’s Singles Board Game Night
Jan. 19, 8:00 p.m.
Newk's Express Café
9722 Great Hills Trail #130
Let's meetup for some board game fun! I plan on bringing Settlers of Catan, Small World, King of Tokyo, Apples to Apples, Guillotine, Kingsburg, Saboteur, Jenga, Dixit, Yahtzee, and The Resistance, just to name a few. Feel free to bring a game of your choice that you are willing to teach and play with others.

Geeks Who Drink Meetup
Jan. 19, 9:00 p.m.
Opal Divine’s Marina
12709 Mopac
Trivia lovers can join a team for the chance to show off their smarts and win free drinks.

Sci-Fi Sunday: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Jan. 20, 7:00 p.m.
Stompin' Grounds Cocktail Lounge
3801 South Congress Ave
Join Austin’s Fantasy and Sci-Fi Book club for their weekly movie night. This time around, we’re heading to the Stompin' Grounds to watch "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

Koumori Comic Creator’s Club
Jan. 20, 7:00 p.m.
Cherrywood Coffee House
1400 E. 38 1/2 St
Koumori Comics is a group of artists and writers dedicated to learning, crafting, and supporting independent comics and the greater Austin community. We're looking for artists and writers of all skill-levels who are excited to develop their skill in a community of other artists and writers.

Pathfinder Society Meetup
Jan. 21, 7:00 p.m.
Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy
6111 Burnet Rd
Looking for some new faces around the gaming table?  Delve into ancient dungeons, uncover lost knowledge and advance the secret goals of your faction - whether it be the freedom-fighting Andorans, the good-hearted Silver Crusade, the shady dealings of the Sczarni, or the strict laws of Cheliax - and gain experience and loot for your character no matter where you game!

South Austin Game Night and Boards and Brews Meetup
Jan. 22, 6:00 p.m.
Rockin Tomato
3003 S. Lamar
This weekly gathering of gamers regularly hosts over 40 people playing a dozen different games. New people are always welcome.

STARR Movie Night - "Planet of the Apes"
Jan. 22, 6:30 p.m.
Junior's Grill & Ice House
119 E Main St; Round Rock
Fun evening of discussion, dinner, and a classic science fiction movie.  The movie will start promptly at 7:00, so please arrive between 6:30 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. to find your seat and order dinner. "Planet of the Apes" is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, Kim Hunter and Linda Harrison. It was the first in a series of five films made between 1968 and 1973, all produced by Arthur P. Jacobs and released by 20th Century Fox.

Beer, Brass & BS
Jan. 22, 7:00 p.m.
Sherlock's Baker Street Pub and Grill
9012 Research Blvd
Join The Mysterium for a monthly gathering of Steampunks at Sherlock’s Baker Street Pub.

Girl Geeks of Austin Nerdy Knitting and Fiber Arts
Jan. 22, 7:00 p.m.
Genuine Joe’s Coffee House
2001 W. Anderson Lane
Enjoy a laid back night of knitting, crochet, embroidery or whatever fibercraft you love in the company of your fellow nerd girls.

Girl Geeks of Austin Board Games and Brews
Jan. 22, 8:00 p.m.
Black Star Co-Op
7020 Easy Wind Dr
Not in the mood for mixed company? Enjoy some microbrewery beers along with Euro style boardgames in the company of your fellow geek girls.

Geek Week at The Institution Theater
Jan. 24, 8:00 p.m.
3708 Woodbury Drive
The Institution Theater has served as a meeting place for people who love pop culture and people. who. LOVE. pop culture!! So, for one weekend, we're going to let the craziness get the better of us and roll out a line-up that harkens back to late nights under the covers with a flashlight or those college movie nights. Every night will feature different geek pleasures including a Joss Whedon pajama party, LOST inspired improv, and much more.


Want to see your event listed? Post the date, a current link, and a good reason why your event belongs in This Week in Geek on the Facebook group, This Week in Geek.

Last September, Christie Shore was coming home from dropping her two eldest children off at Brentwood Elementary School; she rollerbladed while her youngest child biked. Rather than going out of their way to an intersection with a stoplight, the two waited for traffic to die down before crossing Koenig Lane on Arroyo Seco. They narrowly missed being hit by a car that Shore didn’t notice.

“What registered in my head was, this car isn’t slowing down, so I got behind my child and pushed her really hard and landed on top of her,” Shore recalled. “She crashed into the curb and we were crumpled inside Koenig Lane. It was terrifying.”

The car didn’t stop; Shore wound up with road rash and her 3-year-old daughter a broken collar bone. Shore was frustrated with the lack of a crossing option at Arroyo Seco, the street on which the elementary school is located, as well as the missing patches of sidewalk that meant she and her children were in the road as often as they were on the sidewalk.

“I’d had it,” she said, adding that from her home on Adams Street, which is cut off from the rest of Brentwood by Koenig, “we’re dealing with an awful traffic situation and we’re segregated from the school and commerce.”

Shore called 3-1-1, the city’s citizen interest hotline and reported the incident. As a result, the City and State are putting in a traffic signal at the intersection of Arroyo Seco and Koenig Lane. In some cases, making a difference in a neighborhood is easier than some Austinites might think.

Credit: 

City of Austin

When Shore called the division, the City looked into the possibility of putting in a pedestrian crosswalk at Arroyo Seco and Koenig, but said it was ultimately the State’s decision, as Koenig is a state highway (Ranch to Market Road 2222). In the meantime, a representative from the division came and met with Brentwood neighbors to talk about mobility issues on their streets. It took a couple of months to hear back from the State, but the outcome is better than Shore expected.

“When the State looked at the intersection, they decided it didn’t meet the criteria for a crosswalk but did meet the need for a traffic signal,” she said. “Now the City will design it and the State will approve it.”

Koenig is an exception, as a state thoroughfare, but the City has plans in the works for neighborhoods across Austin, to close gaps in sidewalk continuity, add bike lanes, improve and add walking trails and improve crossing options at intersections.

As part of the City of Austin’s 2008 Sidewalk Master Plan, all missing sidewalk segments across the city have already been requested. In fact, The Sidewalk Master Plan shows that Austin has more than $800 million in missing sidewalks and a further $125 million in non-Americans With Disabilities Act compliant sidewalks.

Although sidewalks are already requested, if a section is also included in a Neighborhood Plan, which are developed by the Neighborhood Connectivity Division, Neighborhood Planning and neighborhood residents, it “can help increase their installation prioritization,” said Diane Rice, a NCD project manager. “Residents can also utilize the 3-1-1 system to request a sidewalk or crosswalk.”

Otherwise, sidewalk installation priorities are based on things like proximity to attractions, existing facilities, residential population and neighborhood requests, Rice added. The Department of Transportation decides where and when to install crosswalks based on the amount of traffic, both pedestrian and automobile.

This is all part of Mobility Bond Funding that has been in effect, at a rate of about $5 million per year, for the past few years. Although the improvements are underway, “It will take the City considerable time to bring the city into total compliance and complete the sidewalk network,” Rice said.

For more information on the City’s pedestrian-friendly improvements, click here. To report a problem you’d like to see fixed in your neighborhood, call 3-1-1.

From Napkin to Review
Jan. 21, 5:30 p.m.
Tech Ranch Austin
9111 Jollyville Rd
Over 80 percent of new products fail!  The #1 cause for this is that companies and entrepreneurs jump to creating new products or services before they understand if anyone other than them thinks it’s a good idea and is willing to pay for it.  In the “From Napkin to Revenue” workshop, you’ll learn a proven step-by-step process that helps you discover needs that people are willing to pay to solve, significantly increasing your odds of transforming your entrepreneurial dream into a successful product or service.

North Austin Monthly C/C++ Pub Social
Jan. 21, 7:00 p.m.
Join to learn the location
All are welcome to show up and chat about C, C++, Objective-C, C#, Java, Python or software engineering in general. We'll have a sign saying "C/C++" on our table, so look for it! During the first hour, people come in and find a seat at our table.  At 8:00 we ask the servers not to interrupt for a little while, so we can give everyone a minute or so to talk about who they are and what's on their mind.  After that, people can shuffle around into new groups based on those introductions.

January 2013 SMCAustin Panel at ACC Eastview Campus: Tourism & Hospitality
Jan. 22, 6:00 p.m.
ACC's Eastview Campus
3401 Webberville Rd
In this panel you'll hear how local tourism and hospitality experts use social media to inspire people to travel, promote destinations and put "heads in beds." Our panelists will also discuss how social media is being used as a customer experience platform, and how different social  media outposts appeal to different customer demographics. The bonus? These speakers are hospitality pros, and they are gearing up for a lively, engaging session, with a few door prizes thrown in!

PyLadies Austin Social Meetup
Jan. 22, 7:00 p.m.
Apothecary Cafe & Wine Bar
4800 Burnet Rd, Suite 450
PyLadies is a social/professional group for female Python programmers at every experience level. Developers and aspiring developers only, please.  (Beginners are always welcome!) Come and unwind after work, and let's talk PyLadies business (or whatever else you feel like chatting about) in a strictly social setting.

Web Programming for Beginners - PHP and MySQL
Jan. 22, 7:00 p.m.
Join to learn the location
Heard of jQuery?  CSS? plain JavaScript?  Let's do it!  For the next meetup, we'll cover how to use javascript/jQuery, sprinkled with a dusting of CSS.  To top it off, let's dive into MySql.
We'll pretend we're dba's and create tables and stuff. Please have your hosting account with php, cuz it's gonna be wild.

Ubuntu, and the Death of Android
Jan. 23, 6:00 p.m.
Join to learn the location
With many OEMs now actively seeking, and in some cases building, alternatives to Android will the emergence of a viable competitor in Ubuntu be the death of the Android ecosystem? So many missteps have been taken by Google over the past 5 years that many fear the Android ecosystem is in danger. Though many analyst tout Android's superior market position the reality is that return rates on android phones and customer frustrations are starting to mount. Add to this Google's lack of openness and their willingness to compete with the companies they serve and there's a serious question to be asked; Will Ubuntu be the death of Android?

Austin All-Girl Hack Night
Jan. 23, 7:00 p.m.
Capital Factory
701 Brazos St, 16th floor
Austin’s ladies-only coder social is moving to the fourth Wednesday of every month, and also becoming a more formal affair. Join them this month at Capital Factory.

Austin Mobile Innovators Meetup
Jan. 24, 5:30 p.m.
CanWe Studios
200 E 6th St
Let's get things started! Join the gang from CanWeNetwork at their downtown Austin offices. As mobile innovators, we’re immersed into the always-progressing mobile world and are aware of the struggles that come with it. We’re all fighting the same mobile fight so let’s take this opportunity to join with like-minded mobile innovators and discuss different mobile hurdles, platforms, strategies and more! Oh and did we mention? This will all take place with a cold one in hand. So, come out, have a drink and talk nerdy to me. Let’s get our voice heard in mobile.

Austin Web Python User Group
Jan. 24, 7:00 p.m.
Capital Factory
701 Brazos St, 16th floor
This month, we’ll be focusing on websockets. At 7:00pm, Josh Marshall will give a talk on what websockets are, how you can start playing with them, and the caveats / fallbacks you’ll need to employ when using them in production applications. Then at 8:00pm Robert Myers will be giving a talk on how you can integrate websockets (and all the fallbacks) into your existing Django application by using the push stream module for Nginx. His example will be the “Julython” (http://julython.org) website.

Drupal Dojo
Jan. 24, 7:00 p.m.
Mangia Pizza
8012 Mesa Dr
The Drupal Dojo is for anyone interested in hanging out with other Drupalistas in a "hive mind" environment. There is no set topic or presenter so bring your laptop, a pet project and an appetite.

Tech Ranch Campfire
Jan. 25, 3:30 p.m.
Tech Ranch Austin
9111 Jollyville Rd
Campfire is all about connecting you to the larger tech startup community. We bring out lots of interesting, accomplished people from the ecosystem so you can get the introductions, insight, and help you need to move your business forward, while also helping others.Our structured teaming activity facilitates getting know your fellow attendees at a deeper level than a conventional networking event to enable knowledgeable recommendations that quickly get at what you actually need.

Venture Start Saturday
Jan. 26, 10:00 a.m.
Tech Ranch Austin
9111 Jollyville Rd
Get ready to launch your startup!
Venture Start is a unique program that guides you step-by-step as you: Refine your idea, Compare different ways to do business, Analyze the market and competition, Formulate your next steps. You will receive: Actionable feedback, A clear business model, Your own Lean Canvas forecast, Specific direction to get your business up and running. Our limited class size guarantees you will learn as much from your classmates as you do from our expert instructors. Come with an idea, leave with a plan.

Austin has its share of upsides – mild winters, recreational and cultural opportunities, a growing restaurant scene, a relatively affordable cost of living – but ask people what our city's downside is and you’ll hear a common answer: traffic.

Topping list after list for most-clogged roadways, Austin’s traffic problem is becoming notorious as quickly as the city is growing. As the population has doubled over the past 20 years, the City of Austin and entities like Capital Metro are playing catch-up to figure out how to get people from one place to another using more options than just crowded highways and city streets, as well as how to cope with more growth in the future.

“We are seeing the increased need for high-capacity transit and have been working on that for the past year and a half – busses, rail, intercity rail, bus on rails – and how you make all those different transit elements work together,” said Karla Villalon, communications manager for the city's Department of Transportation.

Photo Caption: 

Hop on.

Credit: 

Austin History Center.

“The real goal of transit projects is to give people alternatives to getting where they need to go without being stuck in automobile traffic,” said Jace Deloney, a Web content manager at Downtown startup Invodo, who also serves on the City of Austin's Urban Transportation Commission and CapMetro's Customer Satisfaction Advisory Committee. “Congestion is only a problem when cars stop people from getting to where they need to go.”

Improving What’s Here

A significant focus of CapMetro’s strategic plan has been to increase ridership through a variety of means, like providing better service in general and publishing more detailed and ubiquitous schedules. For example, CapMetro upgraded bus stop signage last year so people can access schedule information by telephone, via scanning QR codes with mobile devices, through a mobile site or by text message. The organization will also be rolling out a mobile payment and transit schedule app for smartphones in the fall that was piloted during the Formula 1 race in November. Even with these improvements, there is still a long way to go.

“The biggest challenge is getting people to try [public] transit for the first time, maybe for a special event or an entertainment outing,” said Dan Dawson, Capital Metro’s vice president of marketing and communications. “People who have a positive first experience on transit are much more likely to consider trying transit for everyday trips, like going to work or to school. As our downtown area continues to become denser, and traffic congestion throughout the city increases, people are more willing to give transit a try.”

The City of Austin is working to encourage and sponsor more alternatives to driving in Austin. For example, the City is funding CapMetro’s extended weekend hours for the MetroRail RedLine and has put in reverse-angle parking and bike lanes on South Congress to provide safer biking and sidewalk and crosswalk use, understanding that “traffic isn’t all about cars,” Villalon said.

Improving bike lanes and sidewalks are keys to encouraging mass transit use. CapMetro recently built the first of six MetroBike shelters near major transit stations, which allows commuters to leave their bicycles in a secure station during the workday, hoping to encourage people to bike to stops. The City and CapMetro are also working together to improve bus stops by adding sidewalk connections, curb cuts and concrete "landing pads" (protected waiting areas), improving the condition of the stops and helping 100 percent of them meet the highest level of accessibility outlined in the Americans with Disabilities Act, Dawson said.

Of course, improving sidewalks and bike lanes are important not just in making mass transit more accessible but also in encouraging walking and cycling as viable forms of transportation.

“The ability of bikers and walkers to get around town is directly tied to whether or not the infrastructure is there to support them,” Villalon said. “The City has been working aggressively on sidewalks and bike lanes because we recognize that lack of connectivity makes travel very difficult. Everyone needs a safe place to walk.”

Planning for the Future

Proper land use is a key component in encouraging not only walking but also transit use in Austin, Deloney said, explaining that part of the sprawl Austin has experienced around the city is a result of citizens' dependence on their automobiles – the ability of and dependency on driving from one place to another meant building homes, shopping and offices further apart over the last decades.

“By doing so, we have effectively added needless time and space between our jobs, houses and other places we're trying to get to,” he said. “The suburban pattern of development simply does not facilitate an efficient transit system. The density and lack of connectivity in these auto-oriented, suburban neighborhoods prohibit transit from reaching its full potential. If we really want transit to serve Austin's periphery, we need to encourage compact and connected places throughout our city.”

Deloney said he’d like to see more development along mass transit corridors already heavily in use, like Lamar, Congress and Guadalupe. This is also a goal of CapMetro, which works to sway development and construction policy in this direction, so far influencing more than $95 million in new development around stations, with another $125 million in various stages of planning. This is also in line with the denser development goals in the Imagine Austin comprehensive plan for Austin’s future growth. 

“We’re making it easier to access transit by foot, by bike, and through transit-oriented development around our stops and stations,” Dawson said. “Transit-oriented development is centered around transit and encourages people to walk, bike and ride transit instead of relying on a car.”

One plan underway for two of Austin’s most traveled corridors is MetroRapid, a new bus project that will provide higher speed transit along Lamar and Congress, scheduled to launch in the summer of 2014. The high-capacity buses will run on clean diesel, feature expanded headroom and will have technology to prolong a green light if a bus is running behind schedule.

The bottom line is providing people with options, Villalon said, “If you provide those options, most people will choose transit or walking or biking rather than sitting in traffic in their cars.”

CapMetro and the City of Austin are also working on expanding the MetroRail. Although Villalon said officials envision a regionally connected rail system down the line, they have to start somewhere, and that will be to connect Austin’s busiest locations together – Downtown, the Capitol, the University of Texas and the Mueller development. The first phase of putting rail on the tracks will be to solicit community feedback in the spring on topics like stop locations and frequency, Villalon said. Next, the focus will be on getting advanced funding.

“This sort of thing takes years, not months, to get accomplished, so we’re looking at a couple of years before we take it to the voters for a funding vote and then after that we’ll take it to the federal [government] to hopefully get a matching amount,” she added. “In the meantime, we’re looking at design and engineering and environmental impact.”

What About the 'Burbs?

Part of Austin’s traffic problem comes not from the city itself but from commuters in outlying suburbs. CapMetro and the City of Austin have also been working with Lone Star Rail on Project Connect, which envisions a fully connected, seamless regional travel experience to those who live and work in Austin.

“Our congestion problems are regional, and we need to think about regional solutions,” Dawson said. “We already know that people will ride transit when it’s convenient, direct and reliable. MetroRail is a good example. As our community continues to grow rapidly, we need to provide more connections and more choices to keep pace. We need to shift our focus from moving cars to moving people.”

Like any large city, the idea is for Austin to have a variety of options, and those options will still, of course, include autos. This fall, funds were approved in a bond election to make improvements to IH-35, and this year an express lane will be added to MoPac from Lady Bird Lake to Parmer Lane as part of a $200 million improvement project to the expressway. With the new lane, expected to open this spring, single drivers will pay a toll to bypass traffic; public buses will travel the lane for free. 

“We find that there’s no one solution for travel needs,” Villalon said. “We’re looking at how to maximize the capacity of what we have. There are a lot of road projects going on around our region today and for those areas that it makes sense, that’s the approach. In other regions, where there is more density and mass transit can be more effective, that’s the approach.”

Is It All Enough?

Some question whether these efforts are enough, based on the City’s hesitancy to take away parking and traffic lanes from cars and create more “dedicated right of ways” that help speed mass transit traffic.

“We simply cannot break through our city's many congestion choke points unless we have a way to bypass automobile traffic,” Deloney said. “Many studies have shown the importance of dedicated right of way on the reliability of certain transit technologies. This right of way issue will have a huge impact on the CapMetro MetroRapid project's success.”

Limiting parking or moving it to more of a market-based approach could also encourage more people to find alternative ways to get to destination areas like Downtown and South Congress. For example, in 2011, the City of Austin expanded parking meter hours to nights and weekends downtown. “The effect is that [people] have to pay after hours and might choose not to park downtown and take the bus or rail instead,” Villalon said. “It’s providing an incentive to take alternative travel.”

In the end, it becomes a story of the chicken and the egg – what comes first, passengers, cyclists and walkers demanding services, or services that create passengers, cyclists and walkers? Villalon said with a population as booming as Austin’s, people are ready for public transportation.

“As the city grows, more people come from different cities with strong transit systems that work and are asking why we don’t have that here,” she said. “There are a lot of people willing to take the transit as soon as it’s here."