Talk Topeka was an idea that was born nearly 6 years ago when my wife Summer and I were new to town.  We had free time, steady freelance work, and were just getting excited about the community and people of Topeka. Our idea was to create a place where the community could rally together and share ideas and projects that they are passionate about.

However life is complicated and shortly afterwords our wonderful baby boy started having health problems, the freelance work began getting less and less steady as the economy slowed down, and the project was set aside.  In the following years I kept expecting someone else to take this kind of idea and make it work and some attempts were made to varying degrees of success.  However what I keep seeing is small groups forming around great ideas but instead of being integrated into a larger community each of these groups exist in their own little bubbles.

I want to be very clear here, this isn’t a criticism. In fact, its because of how great the Topeka community at large is that we have decided to resurrect this project and give it a real go. The problem we are hoping to address with Talk Topeka is the lack of a central location to get and stay involved in the greater Topeka community for the average Topekan who isn’t already part of the “in crowd”.

So to get started achieving that grand goal we are setting up Talk Topeka as a social hub with the blogging and networking tools that will allow anyone to start and run their own blogs, groups, and forums however they feel best suits their needs.  Once this is set up and running nicely our next step is to start building custom web apps for the community.  Already on our list is a community events calendar to pull in all the different events across the city into one easy to search location and a nifty map for all you garage sale fans to easily find the sales your interested in.  We are hoping to roll out both of these within the next few months.

Of course all the plans in the world won’t mean anything if were not providing what you want.  So please let us know what you would like to see and we will work to add it.