One of the biggest challenges facing CodeNEXT was the sentiment about how people were able to engage with the process. How does a city closing in on a million people take in large amounts of input on something like Land Code? This was a chance to harness and implement big data, increase means of communication, build community among the many, the disseminate large quantities of data to the public. While sometimes smaller in scale, these issues constantly plague the city in other realms, from management of our parklands to reforms in the police department. Austin has grown so much, so fast, and still has a hard time coming to grips with that. The same old power players of the past 25 years can’t quite do it like they used to. We need a new means for holding conversations about our city with many more needed persons to ensure its legitimacy. I believe this is a perfect time for our fiends in tech to step up.