TechTalks

People are gradually joining and TechTalks has just passed 250 signups. This has been the result of several efforts, including Product Hunt, social media marketing and our bootstrapped communities like Bristol JS.

I'm still not seeing a lot of activity from other communities something I'm going to work to address.

It's a long road ahead, I've been without a full salary for a while now and I need a plan for the route ahead.

I've decided to commit to contracting, a first for me. This will allow me to dedicate time to TechTalks long term whilst still having some income. I hope to gradually increase this ratio over time but for now, I'll have 1 full day a week on TechTalks (plus weekends and evenings).

It almost feels like a step back, but also is a sustainable plan for the future.

Our first Bristol JS has been run on TechTalks with Max Stoiber as our speaker. It was great to see we've had so many signups (92 already) and so far no technical issues.

So far feedback has been great, lots of great ideas too. People have been commenting on how it's nice having the videos on the community page! Feeling positive.

A bit blown away about this to be honest.

I applied a little while ago expecting to get at best some useful feedback from Y Combinator but have gotten through to interviews.

The bad news... I didn't get in this time but am not at all deterred by this. I need to work on communicating it's potential a bit better but the fact I even got to this phase is great validation for the product itself and I'm really happy about that. Onwards and upwards.

Today I launched TechTalks on ProductHunt!

It has had 133 upvotes and was one of the featured products of the day! A lot more communities registered than I had expected which is great news but still very few events.

I'll be shifting some focus onto better experience for event organisers soon and hope to improve this.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/techtalks

I'm a strong believer of shipping early, ship often.

Today after about 5 weeks I shipped the first version of TechTalks live! Since I've been furloughed I've been working full time basically non-stop including every evening and weekend to get to this point.

I'm excited and scared, but super proud of what I've gotten built in such a short time. I'll be using my meetup Bristol JS to run our first events.

I've been furloughed. When life gives you lemons invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down.

At this point, I've owned the domain TechTalks.io for exactly 4 years (a coincidence I'm just realising as I write this.

Up until now TechTalks has had a few half-hearted starts but has never gotten off the ground. After all it's an ambitious product and I've not given it the time it deserves.

Covid-19 might be a blessing in disguise for TechTalks. Some dedicated time to spend understanding and building the product and potentially a new start for me.