It’s hard to believe but our four months at hardware incubator Highway1 are just about over. Last Wednesday was Highway1’s “Demo Day”. Jesse got on stage and told an audience of journalists and investors a bit about keyboard history, before unveiling the Keyboardio Model 01.

GigaOM covered the event and said some pretty nice things about us and the Model 01. (Seriously, we’re blushing.)

In other news, we’ve added a bit of content to the website. There are a few details about the Model 01 and about the team, including our latest addition, Mike Kuehn. Mike has joined us as community point-person. He’s just about as crazy about keyboards as we are, and is also our first Colemak typist. You’ll be seeing him on the keyboard forums, reddit and github.

Just over 500 of you filled out the keyboard survey we sent way back in April. When we picked beta testers back in February, we spent days poring over applications, reading the poetry y'all wrote, checking out photos you sent and yes, even watching a few music videos you recorded. This time around, we delegated all the hard work to a random number generator. Please join us in congratulating James Laird! He’ll be receiving one of the first ten production Keyboardio Model 01 keyboards.

The keyboard design is just about final. From here, we’re moving into the “design for manufacturing” phase. Basically, that means figuring out the right way to get you a Model 01 – without Brian spending 15 hours milling each keyboard out of a block of solid aluminum! Once we have the DFM sorted out, we’ll be spinning up the hype machine for a crowd-funding campaign. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but we know where we’re headed and we’re really excited to get you your keyboards.