Lots of excitement is cooking in the foodie world as the Eat Ethnic Mobile App prepares to launch out of the Western North Carolina community, beginning with selections from the great culinary hot spot, none other than Asheville NC! Eat Ethnic has many features including the ability to pinpoint your location, and see all of the wonderful ethnic restaurants and grocery stores in your radius. You will also be able to rate, leave reviews, post photos, favorite places, share finds, and even add “Hidden Gem” locations all across the USA, and then the World.
Where can you find amazing Greek food, Italian food, Polish food, German food, Spanish food and more in Asheville North Carolina? Are you traveling to another City or State? Where can you find places like this once you get there? The Eat Ethnic App will answer all of these questions and requests, then guide you to the perfect place to grab a bite.
A homegrown Mobile App that will connect you with delicious foods and savor the culinary heritage Country by Country. The Eat Ethnic Crowdfunding Indiegogo Campaign has just launched and is looking for local, regional, national, and “Ethnical” support. Take a moment to review what they are doing and make a pledge to be a part of this great Mobile App!
Asheville Hashtags have been around for awhile. As their potential is more understood, they become more useful for a community. When you have a message you want to get across to the proper audience and channels; hashtags can come into play and help make it happen. Think about it. You can be talking to a group of people from around the world simply by using a hashtag of common interest. You can be in a conference, or you can be at home; and you can follow so much documented activity at the event, and even jump into the conversation. What is a hashtag? It is simply adding the # (pound sign) before any word, without any spaces in-between the characters, and it turns that word into a link that links to others using the same word. So we can be at a conference, never meet each other, and all use a hashtag like #avltech13 to bring all of the focused comments together. Then you can see what others are saying about the conference without having to go to each of the individual profiles of the users. This is also great for folks that cannot attend a conference as they can watch the hashtag and sometimes feel as if they were there.
Now some people go overboard, and they #hashtag #every #word #and #make #their #whole #post #overwhelming #and #unimportant. Target your hashtags. If you are hiking with friends and take a photo of the Asheville area mountains, your post would could say something like.. #Hiking with friends in the #mountains of #Asheville. Now if you and/or your friends are in the photo, you could also hashtag #friends. All of those would apply. But do not take a photo of your dinner, and then also hashtag #beer just because they serve beer at that restaurant. There should be Beer or something heavily relating to beer in the photo or post if you are going to use the hashtag.
#Asheville #Hashtags on AskAsheville
We have set us several hashtag feeds on the new AskAsheville website. This means that you can add the “tag” or “hashtag” below and your Twitter tweet or Instagram photo will show up on our website. Here are some #hashtags that you should pay attention to:
1. The #avleat hashtag – This is the code that applies to food in Asheville NC. Of course, we like to feature good and great food in the community, so this is not a hashtag that you should use with fast food.
2. The #avlbeer hashtag – This is the brew code of Asheville NC! If your tweets, photos and posts have to do with brew in AVL, then hashtag it with #avlbeer.
3. The #avlnews hashtag – If you are looking for red hot, on the moment news; the #avlnews hashtag is what you should follow. Please use this hashtag with discretion. Dancing the night away in downtown Asheville is not something you should use this hashtag for. As important as you think your event is, it is many times not news.
4. The #avlhotel hashtag – Here is where you can tag anything that has to do with hotels, lodging and places to stay in the area. Have a question, answer, praise, complaint? Use this hashtag.
5. The #avlwine hashtag – The Asheville Wine community hashtag for years. Use it for posts pertaining to wine, wine dinners, wine bars, wine stores and wine related events.
6. The #avldo hashtag – Have something you are doing, did, are going to, or want to do? Use this hashtag to show us and give us suggestions. For example, if you are going hiking and want to suggest it to us, just add it and your tweet or photo will show up on our “Things To Do” page.
7. The #avlmusic hashtag – The music scene in Asheville is more than enough for their own hashtag. Then all of the great acts coming into town. Use this hashtag for any music related performances and events in the area. This includes DJ’s, Karaoke, Bands, Concerts, Festivals and more.
8. The #avlent hashtag – Asheville has so much entertainment to offer. Take advantage of the big shows that come into town, and also the small theaters that have wonderful productions regularly. Use this hashtag to share your events with us.
9. The #avldrink hashtag – Drinking a cocktail? Have a cocktails special that we should know about? Use this hashtag to show up on the AskAsheville Drink Me page.
10. The #avlbiz hashtag – Taking business in Asheville? Use this hashtag to share your biz advancements and offers with us!
Use these hashtags and many more on both Twitter and Instagram for your posts to show up on the new AskAsheville Website on specific, targeted pages. Also check to see what hashtags others are using that have to do with your interests. Simply go to the Search on Twitter, and type in any word with a “#” before it. Try #mountains #hungry #funny #asheville #hippies or whatever you want.
Open Data Day is coming to Asheville North Carolina. If you are interested in great informational systems and Open Government, this is for you. Here is the press release:
Last year, the City of Asheville organized a technology day that we called “Cloud Day”, which was a day devoted to a dialog about how cloud computing — a new kind of computing that gives a lot of flexibility to organizations — was a critical bus for local government to get aboard. It was an event that we thought maybe 20 folks in the community would come to. We had offers from out of town folks to come and present, and we dissuaded them from coming since we expected a fairly small turnout. Well, we had about triple the turnout we expected, and the feedback was positive.
We asked attendees what they would like to see in the future, and while many wanted to see more cloud computing topics, the majority of them also wanted to see us do a technology day about open data or open government. A year later, we think that there’s a lot less confusion about cloud computing, but questions about open data and open government remain.
In response to last year’s feedback, we reached out to the community and did a meetup of interested people to see what kind of interest there was in an open data day this year. It turned out that there was lots of interest, from the entrepreneurship community to the technology community, and of course, from government and academia. We decided to go ahead and help to launch a regional community event dedicated to open data. We’re really excited about it!
Why are we excited? There are real pain points that exists regarding the easy availability of government data. It’s vital to an open and transparent government, but there are lots of challenges in doing it right. Funding is one: when elected boards are choosing between “new patrol car,” “repair the bridge” or data systems that aren’t critical for daily operations, the non-critical item rarely gets funded. This isn’t a surprise – there are many unfunded needs in any community.
The challenges to open data include funding and technology, but they also include policy, privacy, and legislative challenges. The impact of the challenges? Newspapers, radio, bloggers all wait longer than they want to or need to when they request information, government staff sometimes spends a lot of time sifting through records, and entrepreneurs don’t have access to a wealth of data that they could be using to build value — and jobs! — in their communities.
“Big data is a topic of growing interest for many business and IT leaders, and there is little doubt that it creates business value by enabling organizations to uncover previously unseen patterns and develop sharper insights about their businesses and environments,” said David Newman, research vice president at Gartner. “However, for clients seeking competitive advantage through direct interactions with customers, partners and suppliers, open data is the solution. For example, more government agencies are now opening their data to the public Web to improve transparency, and more commercial organizations are using open data to get closer to customers, share costs with partners and generate revenue by monetizing information assets.”
And so, there are pain points for business, media, AND government. And when there is a problem that affects multiple groups of folks, getting together to plan and act is always a good idea. When you do, generally, people start to have good ideas, and create relationships that they need to execute on those ideas. That’s where Open Data Day comes in.
Open Data Day will feature national keynote speakers from Code for America and Open Data Philly. But it will be more than just keynotes. It will feature workshops that dig in and start to highlight the mutual problems — and even start to identify some solutions. We are even optimistic that some interesting demos will be created during the event, similar to the way that last month’s Startup Weekend created product demos during the event. Although you might think that Asheville, NC would be an unusual place to have this kind of event, we think that the level of civic engagement is higher in Asheville than most places in the US — so we think it’s a perfect venue. And, we’re having it during the height of Asheville’s mountain beauty in the middle of October, which is certainly a draw for the folks coming in from out of town.
We will be finalizing the agenda.
Open Data Day is scheduled for October 16, 2012 in the US Cellular Center in Asheville, NC. We will be announcing more details as we draw nearer to the date. Follow us on Facebook http://facebook.com/opendataday or Twitter @opendataday to keep up with the latest developments!
I have never been much on the Graphic Design side. I usually passed minimal work to a freelance designer if I really needed to. I did not know the visual and creative value of what web designers had to offer, and how important it really was for a functional and beautiful presentation.
Then one day while I was tweeting away, I noticed a tweet from someone in Colorado who said that they were heading to Asheville. I struck a conversation with Amy from OX+CO and she responded. A few days later we were meeting downtown to talk about the area and possible business. After talking for a few, I began to realize the great importance of incredible web design and creativity.
OX+CO partnered with Spark Tech Talk and did a wonderful design for their Drupal based website. Since then, I have done several projects with them. All of their work is stellar and has turned many heads. They have just completed the home page design for AskAsheville (launching soon) and the rest of the site is just about ready to go. They are also in the process of redesigning the G Social Media website as well, should be ready in 2 weeks. Both of these projects are stunning. We are looking forward to showcasing their work and working with OX+CO for years to come. That quick connection on Twitter led to many bigger and better things for all of us. Thank you.
Small businesses in Asheville and beyond now have an affordable option for a beautiful, highly functional website. ZeroZen and Cube Creative Design have built several websites for companies in the area
Cube Creative completed the G Social Media website, and they are currently working on a coupon site for the Hometown Value Guide. (Update 10/13: Cube Creative completed the development of the AskAsheville website and it is so amazing!!)
Having a website that is appealing to the eye, easy to navigate, and functions properly is of utmost importance for your online presence. For many potential clients, your website is the first YOU they see. If you are serious about your company, you should NOT take a cheap shortcut in this area and end up with a mess. Many businesses end up paying 10 times over and losing a lot of potential business because they slack when it comes to this area of their plan. Add around $2500 to your budget and get a decent website.
