Vinli Open House

Last Wednesday night, Vinli opened its doors to the Dallas community. Both local Indiegogo campaign supporters and the tech community turned out in droves for this one. With well over 200 folks in attendance, this was the perfect opportunity to break in the new office.

Before we get to photos and stories, you need to know who Digital Dallas is and why they're important to the Dallas community. DD started to provide a forum for local tech startups and others in town who were looking to put Dallas on the map. They throw some of the best events in town, and if you're a techie, they're your go to. Period. Congrats to Mike Pratt and team!

Following our successful Indiegogo pre-order campaign and hiring push, we thought we'd throw a killer party with the Dallas community.

So what happened at the party? We invited a local food truck to offer sliders to the hungry masses. If you were at the party, you definitely know this was a hit! At no time was the line less than 10 deep. And what do yummy sliders go with? You got it – kombucha, Texas vodka and Texas beer!

With such a favorable response from attendees at the Connected BBQ, we decided to bring back the kombucha cocktail. We had three wonderful brews on tap from our good friends at Saint Arnold's brewery and some Deep Eddy Vodka to mix in. And again, people responded with a resounding thumbs up. Over and over, we heard praises of the strange mixture along with all sorts of funny pronunciations of the magical fermented drink. Ask your friend how to say KOM-BOO-CHA and enjoy.

Don't forget the beer you say. Well we most certainly did not. This purveyor is especially important to the Dallas community. Saint Arnold was the primary beer on tap at CoHabitat parties way back when. What's so important about this CoHabitat place anyway? Well, it just so happens to be the spot where Mark and Scott got their start with Dialexa. They built one of Blake's first projects in the IoT space in exchange for a few month's of office space. Without that simple transaction, Vinli and this party would not have been possible. There have even been rumblings of other companies, even DD, originating from that 'frat house for startups.'

Last but not least, there was the Mini-Z racing setup (WATCH THIS). Almost everyone in attendance checked out our new track. Many even raced in hopes of winning a 3-D printed medal courtesy of AJ at SIK printing. The wild response has inspired us to begin hosting a monthly RC meetup. We will soon be announcing a once a month meetup at the Vinli office where we ask the local community to bring a car and race for the cup! And if you're anything like our team at Vinli, you've probably been conjuring up autonomous driving using real time mapping, RF and video... Yeah, we're figuring that out now! More to come.

Again, thank you for everyone coming out to support DD and Vinli. Thanks to our team for their tireless pursuit to revolutionize the connected car marketplace. Specifically, thanks to Mike Pratt and Damany Daniel at Digital Dallas and their team of volunteers. They are the brains behind such an incredibly smooth event. We'd also like to thank our very own, Jennifer Conley. She got our team at Vinli ready for the big night and is personally responsible for just about everything you enjoyed last Wednesday.

Check out more photos on our FB page!

Stay in touch and be sure to check out the new Vinli developer portal. We're shipping soon.

See y'all at the next one!

Chris, Blake & Andre