Hello from Hamilton, Ontario!
Today was a busy day. We started off the morning with a visit to Tensen design, the folks responsible for the design of the wood and metal parts of the Model 01. We got to sit down with the team there and talk through some of the design changes we're hoping to make before we go to production, including a redesigned center bar, a slightly slimmer enclosure and the all-important adjustable feet. We also reclaimed the aluminum Model 01 prototype that we'd sent off to them nearly seven months ago. If you catch up with us at a future stop on the road trip, you'll be able to check it out.
From there, we headed to downtown Toronto, where Ricardo Jota had invited us to bring the Model 01 to the University of Toronto's DGP Human Computer Interaction lab. More than a few famous keyboard folks are alumni of the DGP lab, so that was a bit of a treat. We spent a bunch of time talking about ideal palm key placement, and just how far you can "tent" a keyboard before most people refuse to type on it. (Spoiler: it's about 15 degrees.)
From there, we headed out to Aurora for this evening's meetup at Matias. We spent a good few hours chatting with Steve and Edgar at Matias about...all sorts of things, ranging from just how hard it would be to make a few keyboards with loud, clicky switches to the ideal plastic for keycaps to tricks for getting the best results from LEDs with Matias keyswitches. We got to play with Matias' tiny "Half-Keyboard" keyboard and got a preview of their new "60%" key layout.
People started to trickle in around 6:30. It was great to have industry veterans like Edgar and Steve there to give a bit of context to some of the questions folks had. We learned a thing or two about Matias keyswitches tonight.
Tomorrow evening, come see the Model 01 in Ann Arbor at Maker Works - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/meet-the-keyboardio-model-01-ann-arbor-tickets-17315539244
Wednesday evening, Raise.com is hosting us in downtown Chicago. If you're in town, come say hi - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/meet-the-keyboardio-model-01-chicago-at-raises-hq-tickets-17315588391
Today, we drove 153 miles (246 km), bringing us to a total of 2098 miles driven. 1,019 of you have backed us to the tune of $311,217 as of tonight.
(Astute readers will notice that we were in Hamilton yesterday, too. We were going to have to cross through Hamilton on our way both in and out of Toronto, so we decided to enjoy the luxury of sleeping in the same place two nights in a row.)
<3 j+k