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oshoma

2011: Shifting into 2nd Gear

Posted by oshoma – December 31, 2010

2010: Wow, what a year. 2011: We’re looking forward to meeting you!

Today is the last day of a fun, chaotic, and whirlwind year on 5 Blocks Out. We launched our beta release this year. We made many new friends, and leaned hard on our old ones. We learned a great deal. We consumed a lot of delicious coffee. And we worked hard almost every single day on improving and growing the service.

Throughout the year we received a ton of support from our member community, family, and friends. Thank you, everyone, for that. Starting something new is not easy, and it’s often lonely. We value every bit of encouragement, advice, and support.

5 Blocks Out is up and running, new members are joining steadily, and people are adding helpful tips. That said, we’ve really only just gotten started. When people ask us how it’s going we explain, “We’re shifting from 1st gear to 2nd gear”. It’s a good analogy: we know we have the horsepower to reach 2nd gear, but we aren’t quite there yet in terms of momentum. We need to grow the user community further so that people feel there’s a critical mass of friends and neighbours on board. We also need to make the service more valuable for people who already know their neighbourhoods well, e.g. by adding more info on what’s going on nearby. We’re working on both of these initiatives right now, and they’ll be our main focus for the next several months.

If you’d like to help us reach that second gear, here are some concrete things we’d love you to do:

And as always, we welcome your thoughts and proposals. Please send us feedback.

We’re looking forward to 2011. Onwards!

Katrin and Osh

You can now “follow” missions

Posted by oshoma – August 19, 2010

If you haven’t seen missions on 5 Blocks Out yet then you should check them out. Missions help you build a list of places and tips with help from other people, and then vote on the results. In the “Queen of Poutine” example below Pam is looking for advice on great places to get poutine in Toronto. Anyone can add suggestions to her mission, write brief tips, and vote places up and down.

Until now the onus has been on mission contributors to check back on the site once in a while to see what’s changed. Remembering to do this is kind of a pain, so we’ve made it a little easier: you can now “follow” a mission, just as you can follow what other community members on 5 Blocks Out are up to.

Here’s how it works: First, find the mission you’re interested in, and open it up. Second, click the “Follow” button to start following. From then onwards, updates on things happening within the mission will show up on your My Stuff page and in your email newsletter.

Mission with follow button

Click the "Follow" button to start following activity in a mission

As the owner of a mission you’re already signed up to follow its activity stream. We also turn on following automatically for anyone who contributes to a mission by adding a tip, adding a place, or voting a place up or down. Lastly, whenever somebody new follows a mission we send a quick email notification to the mission’s owner. (You can control follower notifications via My Stuff > Preferences > Notifications.)

What do you think? Useful? What can we do better? Let us know.

First Six Days: Awesome

Posted by oshoma – July 13, 2010

First six days: awesome. We’re thrilled about how it’s going so far — the number of new visitors, the number of sign-ups and invitations, the new tips and missions people are contributing, and the fact that our web server hasn’t tipped over yet under the weight of all this traffic. (I know, I know… tempting fate. Be nice to the website, please!)

Here are some examples of what people are up to:

Juliette S added a tip about the Belljar Cafe in Roncesvalles:

Ok finally made it here while it was open. Great place to work – especially on dark, broody, rainy days when you feel like you can spy on the world. Good cheap grilled sandwiches. Awesome music selection.

Melanie R says, of Sanagan’s Meat Locker near Baldwin Village:

This is a fantastic butcher shop, with a focus on locally-sourced meats.

Renée M likes the High Park & Roncesvalles Mom’s Group:

I’m a member of this group and have met my best mom friends and my son’s playmates through the meetup: High Park – Roncesvalles mom’s group.

People are starting missions, too. Mike T started “Where can you get a good beer?” with answers such as Caffe Volo, C’est What, Duggan’s Brewery, and Sin and Redemption topping the list. Pamela S is seeking the “Queen of Poutine“.  Mike B is looking for leads on a great plumber so he can complete his home reno. And Paula M is looking for prenatal and postnatal yoga. Help them out!

Lots of people seem fascinated by our neighbourhoods map, which shows the 181 neighbourhoods we know about in Toronto. You can navigate by entering a street address or intersection, or by just dragging the map. And you can click the zoom buttons to zoom in/out, or double-click on the map. (One of our members tells us the zoom buttons don’t show up on IE8. Anyone else seeing that?)

Of course, moreso than the map, people really love their specific neighbourhoods. So far Brockton Village, The Junction, and Roncesvalles are getting the lion’s share of views. Once you’re signed up you can follow neighbourhoods, Twitter-style, to find out what’s happening there. We’ll dig up some stats on that a little further down the road.

The Bird Nest, our community-powered hub for parents, is also getting lots of visits. Here you can see folks exchanging tips that help parents with little kids, e.g. finding kid-friendly places to go, places with activities for kids, and good places to buy family-related stuff. As a parent of a toddler I’m particularly delighted to see the Bird Nest coming to fruition.

And last but not least, so many people have emailed us and tweeted about 5 Blocks Out. Thank you, all of you, for your kind words, and for helping spread the news. We really appreciate it, and your encouragement means a great deal to us.

We’re happy.  Hooray!

Announcing the Public Beta Release of 5 Blocks Out

Posted by oshoma – July 7, 2010

We are delighted to announce the Public Beta release of 5 Blocks Out [http://5blocksout.com/?utm_source=5boblog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=5bobeta]. This officially wraps up our “limited preview” phase during which hundreds of friends and family members helped get the site ready for prime time. 5 Blocks Out is now open for everyone to use. Hooray!
For those of you who are new, 5 Blocks Out makes it fun and easy for friends, neighbours, and parents to share helpful tips on local living. If you spend time in Toronto and love neighbourhoods, enjoy walking and biking to local stuff, have kids, or like supporting green and locally owned businesses, then 5 Blocks Out has something for you. Check it out here [http://5blocksout.com/?utm_source=5boblog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=5bobeta] and see the tour [http://5blocksout.com/about/tour?utm_source=5boblog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=5bobeta] to learn more.
For those of you who are not new, you can now do things you couldn’t do before. You can use the site without signing in — though of course it’s much more fun and helpful if you do. Over the last few months we’ve also made added a main “Explore” page [http://5blocksout.com/?utm_source=5boblog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=5bobeta] that shows an overview of what’s going on site-wide, added a community-powered collection of tips for parents with young kids called the “Bird Nest” [http://5blocksout.com/bird-nest/?utm_source=5boblog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=5bobeta], and made hundreds of other improvements to the neighbourhood pages, destination pages, missions, and member profiles. We’ve been busy.
We currently support Toronto’s core metro area neighbourhoods (see map) [http://5blocksout.com/c/2-toronto/neighborhoods_map?utm_source=5boblog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=5bobeta]. We live here, we love this city, and we think it’s a great place to start. We’ll expand to new geographies over time, based on feedback.
There’s more to come, of course. “Beta” means “work in progress”, and we have a long list of things to improve. Your feedback will help us prioritize what to do next.
A huge thank you to all of the 5 Blocks Out Insiders who’ve helped us learn and grow. Your feedback, encouragement, and inspiration has been vital, and we very much appreciate your help.
Game on!
Katrin Lepik and Oshoma Momoh

We are delighted to announce the Public Beta release of 5 Blocks Out! This officially wraps up our “limited preview” phase during which hundreds of friends and family members helped us test and improve the site. 5 Blocks Out is now open for everyone to use. Hooray!

For those of you who are new, 5 Blocks Out makes it fun and easy for friends, neighbours, and parents to share helpful tips on local living. If you spend time in Toronto and love neighbourhoods, enjoy walking and biking to local stuff, have kids, or like supporting green and locally owned businesses, then 5 Blocks Out has something for you. Check it out here and see the tour to learn more.

For those of you who are not new, you can now do things you couldn’t do before. You can use the site without signing in, though of course it’s much more fun and helpful if you’re logged in. Over the last few months we’ve also added the Explore page, which shows an overview of what’s going on site-wide, the Bird Nest, which offers community-authored tips for parents with young kids, and hundreds of other improvements to the neighbourhood pages, destination pages, missions, and member profiles. We’ve been busy.

We currently support core metro area neighbourhoods in Toronto (see map). We live here, we love this city, and we think it’s a great place to start. We’ll expand to new geographies over time, based on feedback.

There’s more to come, of course. “Beta” means “work in progress”, and we have a long list of things to improve. Your feedback will help us prioritize what to do next.

A huge thank you to all of the 5 Blocks Out Insiders who’ve helped us learn and grow. Your feedback, encouragement, and inspiration has been vital, and we very much appreciate your help.

Game on!

Katrin and Osh

5 Blocks Out DemoCamp Video Is Up

Posted by oshoma – December 17, 2009

We had fun presenting 5 Blocks Out to folks at Toronto DemoCamp #24 a few weeks ago. Geoffrey Wiseman kindly recorded video of the presentations, so thanks to Geoffrey you can now watch the 5 Blocks Out demo online. It’s about 6 minutes end to end. You can also access the demo and Q&A directly on YouTube if you like.

A big thanks to everyone who helped us prepare for the demo, and to all who signed up afterwards and shared such great feedback and suggestions.

Onwards!

5 Blocks Out at DemoCamp #24 on Dec 3

Posted by oshoma – November 26, 2009

We’ve been accepted to present 5 Blocks Out at Toronto DemoCamp #24.  Hooray!

It should be a good opportunity to show what we’ve done so far on 5 Blocks Out, and to get feedback and engagement from a broader set of folks in Toronto’s tech community.

If seeing interesting slices of  Toronto’s tech activity sounds good to you, check out DemoCamp, and in a similar vein and spirit, Ignite Toronto.

announcing the bird nest press

Posted by oshoma – November 15, 2009

The Bird Nest Press
We launched a fun local e-newsletter this week called the Bird Nest Press. Hurray!

It’s geared at parents with young kids. The newsletter will explore local places, resources and tips to make parenting even more enjoyable.

Check out the first issue here. And subscribe to the Bird Nest Press here. We plan to publish every 3 – 4 weeks.

The first issue has a very useful presentation on H1N1 vaccinations. Forwarding it to new moms will be appreciated…believe you me.

Yumm, We Love Open Data

Posted by oshoma – November 3, 2009

One of the things the massive 5 Blocks Out product team (ahem… all two of us) does is slurp up lots of city-related data into 5BlocksOut.com. We’ve built a list of Toronto neighbourhoods, for instance — there are a few hundred — and we’re compiling lists of thousands of named places within the city. This all takes a lot of time, even with the help of our community members, so we’ve been pretty excited about the “Open Data” initiative that the city is putting together. If the city provides some of the data that we currently gather manually it should allow us to focus more on improving the “application” part of 5 Blocks Out, instead of toiling away on invisible-yet-necessary “plumbing”. This is a big deal, not just for 5 Blocks Out and other software projects, but for our 50-some thousand city staff and, ultimately, millions of citizens.

Toronto Open Data kicked off in earnest yesterday and today at the Toronto Innovation Showcase event. I attended the Open Data Lab on day 1, and took part in a panel discussion hosted by Mark Kuznicki with David Crow, Jay Goldman, and Greg Wilson on day 2 (today). It was a lot of fun, and the buzz and positive energy was palpable. See the Twitter backchannels here and here. I was particularly inspired to meet so many smart and can-do city employees.

If you’d like to get involved in requesting and using open data related to the city, check out DataTO.org, where you can put your wish lists. I put ours (place name location data) on the site, so go vote for it now!

The panel webcast will be archived at some point on toronto.ca/toshowcase, so check back there if you’re interested.