What’s agency life without pizza? Today, while many Austinites were shuffling into Zilker Park for ACL Fest, Springbox celebrated National Pizza Month. Hungry folks savored a massive spread of Austin-made pizzas from East Side Pies, Hoboken Pie, Homeslice, The Onion and Rounders.  A blind taste test determined who makes the best pie in downtown Austin. Here are the exit polls:

Best Crust
1st  - Homeslice (15 votes)
2nd – East Side (5 votes)
3rd – Onion (3 votes)

Best Sauce
1st – East Side Pies (12 votes)
2nd – Rounders (6 votes)
3rd – Home Slice (3 votes)

Best Overall
1st – Home Slice Pies (14 votes)
2nd – East Side (7 votes)
3rd – Rounders (2 votes)

Thanks to Amber, Carlos and the pizza crew for putting together an epic lunch.

What’s that cooking in the Knoxville? At high noon, the foodies in the Springbox Lunch Club created a feast of stick-to-your-ribs comfort food. The tastes and aromas were amazing. Couldn’t be there to experience it? We’re working on a scratch-and-sniff plug-in for HTML5 and the iPad. Stay tuned for that upgrade, other future technologies and more food.

To get in the spirit of our client Central Market’s Hatch Chile Festival, today we held the first annual Springbox Hatch Chile Cook-Off. By lunchtime, there was quite a diverse spread, with everything from homemade Hatch Chile tamales to savory Hatch cupcakes.   

We ate. We drank. We ate some more. Then we searched for the Tums. 

• Overall – Hatch Carne y Papas con tortillas by Carlos 
• Hotter than Hell – Hatcharitas by Burger 
• Most Original – Brownies con Hatch by Tricia 

Next week, Springbox will be hosting an Austin Flash Platform User Group Meetup.

For you Flash pros out there, it’s a great opportunity to see our office and check out the work of our rich media and development teams. Drinks and refreshments will be provided. 

Roman Villareal and Chris Martinez of the Austin Adobe Flash Platform Usergroup will manage the meeting. They'll have some giveaways from Adobe, and there will be at least one, maybe two, presentations: 

• HTML5 and Flash, presented by Tom Hudson, Rich Media Manager, Springbox
• Face Recognition and Flash, presented by Steve Shipman (tentative)

Here are the details:

What:
Austin Flash Platform User Group Meetup 

When:
Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 6:30 PM 

Where:
Springbox office. 708 Congress Avenue, right across the street from the Paramount Theatre and Stephen F. Austin Hotel.  

Parking:
Up to you to find a spot. Spaces open up after business hours.   

RSVP here.  

Springbox takes a different approach to team building. At our most recent agency off-site meeting, Springboxers were divided into seven teams. Their task: address a local summer social issue. Topics ranged from to bike safety to keeping people safe on Austin area lakes and rivers.

With two hours on the clock, teams brainstormed creative solutions and produced 1-minute videos to pitch their ideas.

The winning team addressed water safety and won funding to produce their winning concept, instructional koozies. Want the full details? Watch their video: