Last night was our kickoff ceremony for our AIR Interactive program!  It was fantastic to catch up with old friends of Knowbility, as well as meet and welcome our new ones.  We were very excited and privileged to have some notable people in attendance.

• Norman Kieke and George Luc from the Mayor’s Committee for People with Disabilities.  Mr. Kieke helped us announce our team and artist matches, and Mr. Luc is leading one of our fabulous web designing teams.
• Kathy Keller –Matejek and Angie English from the Governor’s Committee.  Kathy is one of our wonderful AIR judges, and Angie one of our participating artists this year.
• We recognize our AIR judges: Jim Thatcher, Jim Allan, Glenda Sims, Dan Kinnunen, Kathy Keller –Matejek, Brenda Adrian, Bryan Robison, Cousett Ruelas, Lewis Phillips, Kim Loop and William Yarbrough.

This year we have 7 teams who will work with 7 local artists and Arts groups to create fantastic and most importantly accessible websites.  The following is a list of the NPO/Artists and the teams who will be working together:

• Diverse Arts Culture works, and Team Unchain My Art from Microassist.
• English Photography, and Team Site Unseen from State Agencies and Independence.
• Artist Lisa Laratta, and Team Insane in the Mainframe from the San Antonio and Houston online marketing communities.
• Outreach Productions, and Team Water Gang from the Texas Water Development Board.
• Sangeet Millenuium, and Team Silicon Heart, which is  led by Mayoral Committee member George Luc.
• Skylark Records, and Team PopRocks from PopLabs out of Houston.
• Texas Folklife, and Team EnviroGeeks, which consists of people from State Agencies, Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, and other webmasters.

We are very excited about this year’s AIR Interactive!  Good luck to all of the teams this month.  Don’t forget, we will have people vote on their favorite site at Austin’s SXSW Interactive Media Conference, and the winners will then be announced!

We are very appreciative of all of our AIR Advisory board members for everything they do for Knowbility.  Their contributions help to make these programs successful!

And finally, we thank our wonderful sponsors who make all of this possible!  This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division, by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.  In addition, we are grateful to St. Edwards University and SXSW for sharing their resources with us.