Noonhat

It’s probably clear to anyone who has visited the noonhat site that I’m not much of a web designer. The initial version of the site had the map at the far bottom of the page. It wasn’t even visible without scrolling! I’ve made a few changes over the last few days which should make the site more interesting and a bit easier to use.

• Moved the map to the top of the page, and the email and date fields to the right of the map.
• Simplified the explanatory text.
• Added a text bubble in the map to explain the blue circle.

Before:

After:

The page is still quite plain, but I hope it’s better than before. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on the first version! I’d love to hear what you think of the current layout, and how it could be improved.

I gave a short talk at Seattle BizJam a few weeks ago. I introduce Noonhat and rant a bit about thinking small, and how everyone you know is amazing.

Huge thanks to Bryan Zug who video taped the event! He’s just put the videos online. You can watch the Noonhat video right here:

Update: One thing I didn’t make especially clear in the talk is that one of the goals of Noonhat is to connect us with people outside of our normal social/work/hobby circles. It’s easy nowadays to filter down to match on particular interests, I want to help all of us open up a bit and have good conversations with a wide variety of people. Occasionally, even people we may disagree with!

Thanks to everyone who signed up this week!

On the 19th, our opening day, we had 15 people sign up for lunch and matched them in small groups of 2-3 people. Also, all of the sign ups were close enough to each other that I was able to match everyone with at least one person. I heard back from two of those groups, so I know that some people met, and had good conversations. Yea! Success!

Ironically, my own lunch didn’t actually happen. The default map location was centered over downtown, and the people in my group hadn’t noticed that the map needed to be moved and were actually too far away from downtown to make it for lunch. On the plus side, it’s very clear that I need to rework the front page to make it easier to understand at a glance. Until then, I moved the default location to the middle of the bay. That should make it easy to tell the difference between someone signing up for lunch downtown and someone who didn’t move the map at all. :)

After the first day, there was about one successful match per day. Each day there were a few people with no one else nearby. By default, I’m sending an email to let these people know and keeping their information active by default, so I can match them up once a few nearby people sign up.

I had my first successful lunch on Thursday. We met at a nearby sushi restaurant and had a fun rambling techie conversation. We’ve got a lot in common, I’m pretty sure we’ll stay in touch. Yea! Success!

Here’s the ironic part: One of my goals with Noonhat is to meet people outside my normal circles. On my first lunch, I meet someone who is also a programmer, likes and uses the same languages and frameworks as I do and works in a building on the next block. :)

As time goes on, I expect that we’ll end up with a wider and wider variety of people using the site. For now, I’m looking forward to lunches next week. I’m off to work on the site now.

The Name Inspector just posted an excellent article about deciding on a name for Noonhat.

Thanks again Name Inspector!

The initial emails are on the way. I’m looking forward to lunch!

Here is a quickly hacked together overview of the first day’s worth of Noonhat lunches courtesy of Google Earth.

By numbers:

• 15 people
• 5 groups
• group sizes varied between 2 and 5 people (we only hit five, because several people didn’t move the map at all :) )

Happy lunching everyone!

PS - If you’d like to have lunch with me, I’ll be signing up for Noonhat every day for the rest of the week. If you choose an area near the international district, chances are good we’ll end up in the same group.

We have about twenty five people signed up for lunch tomorrow the 19th! If you’re signed up by 11pm this evening (Seattle time), you’ll get an email matching you with other nearby folks tomorrow. I’m looking forward to hearing how it goes for everyone!

Today I was chatting with Rowena from Rose’s Deli and we started wondering what people who use Noonhat should be called:

“… it doesn’t seem right to say noonhaters, but maybe noonhatons? Guess it’s another name game session? :) “

Indeed. Noonhaters is out. :) We like noon, not hate it.

• noonhaters - Out, we like noon.
• noonhatons
• nooners - Out, means something very different on the east coast. (see comments)
• noonies
• noonhatties
• noonhatters
• noonians
• noonites

If you’ve got a suggestion, please add it to the comments below, thanks!

Update: I’m updating the list of possible names as comments come in.

I had a great time at BizJam on Saturday! Huge thanks to Dan and Lara for putting on such an excellent event.

I volunteered to help Peter and Shelly at the Pathable desk. They worked their magic to create the BizJam name badges. Each of us filled out a short questionnaire, and they printed a few similar and opposite names on each badge. It was a great way to get conversations going!

In the afternoon I camped out in the hallway and asked random people to look at the Noonhat site and see if they could figure it out while I looked over their shoulders. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice! Especially, Christopher, Ken, Bill, Rebecca & Keith.I gave the talk about Noonhat. However, just before I went onstage, Brady told me that I couldn’t bring my notecards! Notes don’t really fit with the Ask Later format (20 slides on an automatic 15 second timer). And besides “it’s more fun for the audience that way.” The talk was much better this way, I think. Thanks Brady! Bryan Zug recorded video of all of the talks, so I’ll post a link to the Noonhat one when they go online.

The talk seemed to be well received and several people gave me very good ideas for improving the site. In particular, Adam L.K. Phillip from Axios Law Group had a very specific vision of how to simplify the concept and Angel Djambazov from Pop Shops had some good thoughts for the future.

Overall BizJam was amazing. I learned enough in those few hours to keep me busy for weeks.

I’ll be giving a five minute Ask Later style talk at the Ignite talks at Seattle’s BizJam tonight.
It looks like it’ll be a great event, if you’re nearby, come out and join all the BizNik folks! Here is the schedule. There will be a bar, Ask Later talks, a fashion show, silk rope aerial performance, and a DJ.

Hope to see you there!

Noonhat is live!
I just put the initial version of the site online. It’s ready to help you have great lunch conversations.

For now, it is limited to the Seattle area. If you’re near Seattle, sign up today!