Asynchronous Instruments

These two weeks felt especially productive because I was able to move from building mostly on my own to getting meaningful external feedback. I'll start with the best update, which is the ability to begin to host retreats with Retreatology, which is a part of Moishe House. My partner is hosting a retreat in January and asked me to demo my product for her so that people can feel like they can stay in touch and continue to connect with what they learn after the retreat. And she's also set me up with the Retreatology leader who has a training in February, and I can turn around right after and host a retreat with my own skills and add my retreat and those people to the platform and try this. And then the next level of that is being connected to the leader and seeing if this can be used by the up to 36 retreats that are hosted over the course of a calendar year. That's the best way in. Four people reviewed my story map application, which has become my primary demo, and I received strong feedback from a range of perspectives. One of my original hypotheses was that authors, podcasters, and writers might want to map their own material to create a more immersive experience for their audiences. Two people independently suggested exactly that after seeing the application, which gave me some early validation. I also spoke with several filmmakers, and those conversations may lead to opportunities to bring film-related materials into the platform. On the product side, I pushed the application from a concept toward a much more fully fledged demo. I built easier ways to add new content and created a new homepage designed to draw people in, prompt reflection, and turn their ideas into conversation and stored data. I also received new leads to facilitators, especially meditation facilitators, and got further validation around my use case of helping people continue practices after retreats or workshops. I learned there are already products serving part of this need, which is encouraging because it gives me a clearer competitive landscape and a stronger basis for comparison. I also started my experiementation on X, IG, Youtube. I am pushing IG and testing my engine for social media, and getting good responses and making sure people know me through my persistent presence.