We are in the final days now before the release of Local.net, a project that has been almost two years in the making. It is a very exciting time and I cannot wait to send out the next batch of invite codes to the 10,000+ people that have registered.

I could not help but write about the energy and excitement that we have been living. The pure adrenalin that is driving the Local.net team is a fantastic experience and has highlighted just why some people call their businesses their babies. The months and months of anticipation, the unknown, and the joy of brining something to the world that would make a life of its own!!!

Local.net is a website that has a particular relevance and context but it will be the users and their influence that will ultimately determine its purpose(s). Building anything that does not have a fixed purpose or application is extremely difficult and for the entire time we where developing there was always the unknown… Would the public like it or not!

This element of surprise has made for an interesting time; the anticipation of what people may think has been cause for much careful thinking. You can have test groups and ask as many family members and friends for feedback that you like but nothing will remove the stress and anticipation of what the general public might do, both those with positive or negative intentions.

Thankfully, everyone that has been involved with the project has been excited and most importantly (for our sanity) everyone that has only recently been made aware of what Local.net does has received it exceptionally well, beating our wildest expectations.
On this note I would like to thank everyone that has helped out to get it to where it is today. The people working in-house, those working from afar and very importantly those that have no idea their experiences and influence have contributed.
Everyone who is directly involved has my thanks already but I would like to say a quick thanks to a few people that would never have known:

• Craig Newmark from craigslist.org for operating his website as a democracy and swearing by it. He is the founder but is also the customer service rep and that is inspirational and I think it is instrumental in his websites great success.
• Mike Mathieu and FrontSeat for launching Walkscore. If not for that we would have been completely different. Our original vision was far broader but after discovering Walkscore we realised that we don’t need to do it all and to focus in on what we could do best.
• Matt Flannery, Jessica Jackley and Kiva.org. They had a difficult problem to solve but found a great win-win solution that uses a social architecture.
• Michael Arrington and TechCrunch for improving transparency and highlighting man what to do and not to do scenarios. I enjoy reading TechCrunch and actually paying the proper attention to what works and what doesn’t. It is free to read and so I think many people do not pay sufficient value/respect to the lessons that can be learnt. I see it all the time and it is comparable to reading and watching video of people tripping as they walk down a specific street and yet many of those watching still walk down that same street without caution of tripping. Because you think you are different doesn’t make you different.

There are a great many others, too many to mention but my quick blog post has already well and truly over shot the preferred word count.

For those that read my blog but have no idea what Local.net is all about… no need to worry, it will not be to long until we launch the public beta and so you can check it out for yourself.