Noonhat

My talk was accepted, so I’ll be speaking about Noonhat at Ignite Seattle 4. I’m going to focus less on what Noonhat is, and more on how it came to be. Here’s the blurb for the talk:

Brian Dorsey - An embarrassment of riches - the story of Noonhat
We live in amazing times. Individuals and small groups can build small things with big effects. Even working part time.

Should be fun!

Update: The Noonhat video is online!

I’ve spent the last few weeks working on things behind the scenes. Originally, there were several things I had to do by hand each day to make sure the lunches happened. I even sent the email messages for the very first batch of lunches by hand! Now, the process is automatic, with just a pause for me to do a quick visual check before automatically sending out the match and match-failed emails.

Now that I’ve got more automation in place, it’s time to get the word out to as many people (near Seattle) as possible!

Things I’ve done so far:

• I’ve attended a few techie/startup events and told everyone I met about the site.
• I gave a five minute talk about the site, and the thinking around it at BizJam and Adobe onAIR.
• I posted a small ad on craigslist, in the activity partners section. I thought about putting it in the “strictly platonic” section of the personals, but maybe that’s not a good fit?

Things I’m planning to do soon:

• Create a logo.
• Make small signs to post on bulletin boards at coffee shops & restaurants.

Things I’d like help with:

• I’d love to get a note about Noonhat in the local papers, anyone know the right people?
• Probably should write a press release of some sort, but I don’t know the first thing about doing this well. Do you? ;)
• Ideas for other cheap/free ways to get the word out.
• Tell everyone you know about Noonhat! :)

Thanks for following along on the blog, and a huge thanks to everyone who has signed up so far!