By Amber Sandhu, Redding Record Searchlight, Calif.
More than 60 people came together at Shasta Venture Hub on Saturday afternoon for the National Day of Civic Hacking, and spent the day brainstorming ideas on how to put Redding on the map and increase community tools for its citizens.
Those who attended the event, called #Hackforchange, were divided into three teams according to their skills and spent time either building a mobile application for the city of Redding, increasing the city's social media presence, or going on travel review sites to insert more Shasta County locations that weren't listed or reviewed.
Megan Conn, development manager with Turtle Bay Exploration Park, worked with a team of five people to insert reviews on some North State locations and activities on internet sites such as TripAdvisor and LonelyPlanet.
Among some of the locations on her list to review were Lassen Volcanic National Park, Clover Creek Preserve, Redding Beer Week and Redding Aquatic Center. Conn said people often passing through Redding may consider the city a "gas station stop," but if people looked through some of the city reviews on popular travel websites, they just might change their minds.
"And when they look at things to do in Redding, it'll look more populated," she said.
The event was organized by Catalyst Redding Young Professionals in collaboration with Redding Area Designers & Developers, Shasta Venture Hub of the Economic Development Corporation of Shasta County, the city of Redding, Shasta College and Startup Redding.
Eric Casequin, 37, a software engineer with Limelight Health, led a team of 25 people who were interested in designing a prototype mobile application that would put the city of Redding on the map and allow residents to report city issues such as homeless encampments, potholes and graffiti, at the city's law enforcement level.
"It's a community tool for city citizens to report or suggest," he said about the application. "It's to improve Redding."
In attendance was Redding Vice Mayor Brent Weaver, who sat with the team that worked on developing a better social media presence for the city. Weaver said he was excited to learn more about bettering Redding's image through the travel website. He said the development of the city mobile application would put citizens in touch with the correct city department and allow for more "pertinent information" to pass through.
Weaver said he's active on social media himself and would like to see the Redding audience grow in a positive light, and not be associated with negative information.
"We do have a lot of broken themes in our community to fix," Weaver said. "We also have great things. We want to push positive things we're working on."
©2016 the Redding Record Searchlight (Redding, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
