Austin and OurPangea: Preserving the Hidden Gem Weird Capital of the World

Besides the serious food coma epidemic that recently swept across America after Thanksgiving, Austin, Texas is also coming down from hosting the Circuit of the Americas, which brought the first F1 Grand Prix facility to the U.S.

From my perspective as a relative newbie to Austin the whole experience was a pretty exciting testament to the visibility of the city’s growing energy.  But I did hear many residents adopt the faux greeting “Welcome to LA,” a sarcastically pessimistic but admittedly apt statement on Austin’s rapidly changing (these aforementioned people would say ‘selling-out’) community. Austin is growing, there’s no denying that. The rumors say there are a few hundred people moving here every day.

Rumors aside, what everyone in Austin knows for sure is that construction Downtown is constant. New skyscrapers are making our city taller and more expensive. Streets are becoming progressively congested with traffic and after last weekend it’s less unusual to see a Ferrari at a stoplight next to the Austin-standby ‘man-on-a-two-story-bicycle’ mode of transportation. I wrote earlier about the pride people feel about Austin, and there’s already a desperately sentimental fog hanging over the city representing both a longing to stay a hidden gem and a fear that Austin’s ‘glory days’ as capital of the Weird are over.

Our community is still far from normal, but the seeds of commercialization are being planted, making some Austinites feel the need to grasp onto and hold tight the weirdness that has pushed the city to greatness. As an example,  Austin City Limits, a music festival initially created as a way to celebrate the music of Texas by PBS (read: the perfect Austin-weird music fest), has been expanded to two weekends (read: commercialized), and people are starting to consider Fun Fun Fun Fest as one of the ‘realest’ festivals in town.

From OurPangea’s perspective, we know we can’t stop change from happening. In fact, we think change should be embraced because along with every change, no matter how drastic, there is opportunity.  What’s important is being able to remember our history, recognize where we came from and understand why that matters.

So we want to help everyone in Austin preserve what has made it great while it’s still the hidden gem Weird capital of the world. Why do you live in Austin? What do you love most about Austin? What is your favorite memory? What makes Austin your city??

Think of this as an online time capsule made up of your stories. We want to give people a window into our community so they can see why we love Austin and let them love it with us!  Submit your stories and love letters to Austin here!

A Project and A Mission. A Personal Perspective On OurPangea

The two ways I look at OurPangea are as a project and a mission. As a project this is the most invigorating venture I could have taken on. And at 23 why not aim big? Every aspect of this company has to be designed and then built. When I was a kid I played with Legos more than I should have because I liked building things I designed. Now, I have a chance to build a company and I intend to make the most of it. The second, and quite frankly, more intriguing drive comes from what OurPangea represents as a mission. If you have a chance to build a company, why not build it to do something good?

Building the company is fun, but that’s my selfish motivation. What really pushes me is what this company might do. All aspects of this company have been designed around the sole purpose of creating a new medium to understand the world. The idea is that we all can benefit from being able to better understand the world around us. After graduating college I’ve lived in two cities over the past year. I’ve had a chance to appreciate how unknown the world around us is. When we’re in school there is a bubble community you have automatic access to. When we’re alone in the world, the game is quite different. It takes work to find friends you want to keep around, the people who are interested in doing the things you like to do, or even finding a last minute event on a Saturday. And the most basic limitation, you don’t really know where to start. These are all familiar issues we encounter and OurPangea is designed to solve them; once we do that, this only gets more interesting.

It’s one thing to not know what’s going on around you or who’s there, it’s another thing to realize how difficult it is to understand what it all means. What does living in Colorado Springs mean? What is the world like as a community member there? Is it any different than living in Austin? Chicago? You bet it is. It’s the diversity of culture, something we all experience on one level or another and it’s something that has been nearly imperceptible for the longest time. This lack of understanding is the fundamental issue OurPangea will solve.

For each of us using OurPangea we’ll benefit from getting to know the world around us, not just the world we’re familiar with. We’ll be able to join in and really connect with people we may never have met, and when we do we’ll feel like we’re a part of something. As we use the site, as we explore the different cities we’ll start to see what living in one place means to us, and to the people living there. We’ll start to understand what culture means and what it is. We’ll be able to see how similar our life is to everyone else’s, but also how different. And in the end, when everyone starts to see there is more to life than just themselves, we’ll have laid the foundation humanity needs to unite.

So it’s not just a lofty goal, it’s a lofty goal we can work towards. In the end, as much as I like building a company, what’s more important is building this idea. I want OurPangea to be the monument that reminds us how human we all are. I want to see how our similarities untie us, and then realize it’s the differences that make us special.