Issue link: http://townofcary.uberflip.com/i/635085
Social Media Activity The Town of Cary has seven Twitter feeds: Town of Cary (News), TOC Safety, TOC Traffic, TOC Fun, TOC Downtown, Cary Teens, and Booth Amphitheatre. The Town has six Facebook pages: Town of Cary, NC; Cary Art Daze; Cary It Green; Imagine Cary; The Cary Theater; and Booth Amphitheatre. Likes to date Followers to date Viewers to date Followers to date 32,254 680 17,967 32,834 Website Update The Town saw an overwhelming amount of interest in September 2015's information architecture survey. Click here to see the results of that survey. Did You Know? The first testable sitemap framework (which directly incorporates feedback from the information architecture survey) has been delivered by the vendor, Digital Deployment. As of December 1, 2015, the Town is in the middle of the testing period for its new site map. An internal focus group, made up of around 20 Town staff and committee members, spent November running tests, and in December, that testing group will be expanded to include citizens who have opted in. This testing period for information architecture should last until late January 2016, at which point design discussions with Vision Internet will begin. Citizens who did not participate in our November 2015 design survey will still have plenty of opportunities to offer feedback and follow development via Cary Have Your Say. Downtown Cary The Town, in conjunction with several downtown merchants and the Downtown Cary Food & Flea hosted the first annual Triangle Chili Challenge on November 8. Approximately 10 chili competitors took part in the event, which drew over 2,000 people during the course of the challenge. The Town's Fire and Police Department also competed. Open Data The Town's Open Data Portal is scheduled to go live in March, in conjunction with the Triangle Open Data Day. The Town has licensed an open data hosted platform for this important source of Town information. The open data portal offers the ability to display structured data to citizens. And, the site will offer a number of tools to allow users to interact with data via maps and charts. The data can be downloaded in a variety of formats that allow application developers to use our data to create useful applications for our citizens. Datasets will include, but not be limited to crime data, permitting data, development data, traffic accident data and zoning data. The Town is also developing best practices and procedures around maintenance and further development of data sources. In parallel, we are working to develop a data-driven story that will utilize our open data. The Town has formed a Regional Open Data Group that meets quarterly and works on standardization of data and collaborative projects. This Group consists of Town of Cary, City of Raleigh, Wake County and Durham. We are partnering with the Code for Cary Brigade and they will be hosting a hack night to create a series of data visualizations. Did You Know?