With the click of a mouse, students now have information about ongoing and upcoming Baton Rouge events at their fingertips.
Five days ago, co-developers Jason El Koubi and Matthew Levine officially launched rougepages.com, an online current events guide for the city of Baton Rouge.
“Rougepages.com is a community-based resource,” said Levine. “Anybody can post an upcoming event to the site, and anybody can use it to find out what is occurring in the Baton Rouge area. We want to become the most powerful resource connecting the community.”
Late one night three months ago, Levine and Koubi met at The Chimes restaurant and began putting together ideas for the Web site.
“There had been a lot of noise about this concept around the Baton Rouge area,” Levine said. “We felt the site would fulfill a need that yet to be met in our community.”
Levine said he and Koubi met through a mutual friend when Levine moved to the Baton Rouge area two years ago.
“As a person new to Baton Rouge and the state, I was taken with Louisiana culture,” Levine said. “I enjoyed going to events in the area, but was frustrated when I could not find one resource that listed all the events in one place.”
Levine said rougepages.com is a place for a variety of people to publicize their events to the community.
“College students can also benefit from this site,” he said. “Part of the college experience is to broaden one’s horizons. This site is fast, functional way students looking for interesting activities can use to find out what is going on.”
Ashley Mitchell, a biological engineering freshman and Lafayette native, said when she moved to Baton Rouge for college, she was not very familiar with the city.
“I think this site will be very beneficial to people new to the Baton Rouge area,” she said. “Although I had visited Baton Rouge before coming to LSU, I still had no idea what was going on outside of the University. I can imagine many incoming freshmen and out-of-state students feel the same way.”
Catherine Grant, an undecided freshman, said she thinks the new site will be a success.
“It’s a great way for students to find out information about events going on in Baton Rouge versus just on campus,” Grant said.