I’ve been running tech events for a while now. These events only happen a couple times a year, and in between, things tend to go quiet. People kinda forget about the whole thing, which is a drag.

To keep the vibe going, I started sending out a newsletter between events. At first, it seemed like a good idea. I’d share updates about upcoming events, link to talks from our YouTube channel, or talk about whatever big thing was happening in the industry. Easy, right? Well, not really. After a few issues, I realized this was turning into a huge time-sink. I was spending way too long trying to fill each newsletter with interesting content.

Just Automate It 😶

One night, after struggling to put together yet another newsletter, I had a thought: “There’s gotta be a better way to do this.” I’m an engineer, so naturally, I figured I could just automate the whole thing.

So instead of spending 5 hours on each newsletter, I went full nerd and spent, like, 50 hours (okay, maybe closer to 100 hours) coding up a solution. I wrote a bunch of scripts to pull in content from RSS feeds, hit up the Meetup API for event data, and do a bunch of other stuff that was eating up my time.

Lambda time...

I got all these scripts running on AWS Lambda, set up some schedules, and let them do their thing in the background. They’d collect all the industry news, curate it, and slap it into a newsletter template I’d already set up.

Now, instead of stressing over every issue, I just had to write a couple of key sections myself, and boom—newsletter done in minutes.

...then I got noticed

After a while, other event organizers started noticing what I was doing. They saw the newsletters and were like, “Hey, can I use that too?” Then some of my friends who run small businesses wanted in as well. They needed a way to keep their customers engaged, and my system seemed like just the thing.

That’s when it hit me—this could be more than just a personal project. It could actually help a lot of people.

Turning It Into a Real Product

So, I decided to take things up a notch and turn my scripts into a legit product. I built a user-friendly interface, set up a backend that could handle multiple users, and added some monitoring tools to make sure everything ran smoothly. Spent a lot of time making sure it was solid and easy to use.

Now, I’m finally launching the first real version of this thing. I’m calling it Topical, and it’s ready to help other communities and businesses keep their audiences engaged without all the hassle.