If you’ve ever started a business–and especially if you’ve ever used a laptop computer while starting this business–chances are you’ll appreciate Kirk Ladendorf’s interview with longtime Austin entrepreneur Gary Pankonien. He led the team that developed Compaq Computer Corp.’s industry-first notebook computer many years ago.  He’s kept it moving since.

You have a range of experience in technology ranging from Compaq Computer to several small startups in Austin. How does that help you as CEO of this young company?

After you’ve ridden a few rides – and fallen in enough holes – you learn what to expect.

Many of the issues are second nature. You still have to develop the plan and solve the hard issues, but you learn how to anticipate the next moves. You learn very early that cash flow is almost more important than your mother.

What are the right traits for a technology entrepreneur? Is it technical knowledge, market savvy, organizational discipline or something else?

I think a major trait of being an entrepreneur is being able to wake up in the morning looking forward to the challenges of the day and not knowing if your business is going to live or die.

The unknown is always changing, and how you handle the change usually predicts success.

You have to process a lot of data, usually not a with a complete data set, and make decisions that will significantly impact your future.

What’s fun about running a startup?

The first time you open the mail and see the check from your first sale, it’s a good day.

I once was standing in a checkout line behind two ladies talking about this great company her husband was interviewing with and the future they were looking forward to. She eventually said who it was, and I realized that it was the company our team had built. Yes, we did hire her husband.

We’ve known for some time now that the aggrieved local taxpayer and Austin web professional community’s outcry over reported plans to outsource the City of Austin website redesign to a Californian firm did not fall on deaf ears. Kudos to Austin officials for listening to concerned locals and resetting the project.

Austin Chronicle reporter Wells Dunbar delivers a thorough rundown of the project’s history, priorities, and current trajectory in this week’s issue.  It’s a good read, and the stuff about “crowdsourcing” is just plain cool.  Who knows?  Maybe there’s a scenario where we’d do work on the project, if stars align.

Whatever final form the website redesign takes, it will certainly be an improvement not only over the existing portal but also over what the city was mulling just a few months ago. The balance the city faces is in designing a site that can satisfy not only the tech-savvy crowds of OpenAustin, who have vastly invigorated public discussion of the site, but also the average visitor looking to contact her council member. (As Web tools like social networking, blogging, and the like become more ubiquitous, this gap is already shrinking.) Another component that shouldn’t be overlooked is the original impetus behind the redesign, the push for greater transparency and accountability; the city could get the slickest website in Cyberspace, resplendent with Web 2.0 doodads, but if it isn’t fed more information on permitting, development, and budgeting, it would still be an epic failure.

Read the full article here!