I’ll start off with a bit of background. I went to high school in Enugu, Nigeria. For about 10+ years I haven’t seen most of the kids that I came of age with. And I say 10+ years because I refuse to date myself any further . Anyway, 10+ years from high school, we have all matured from the young naïve boys and girls who left their parents for the first time to head into the ‘organized chaos’ called boarding school. We had, like many other kids elsewhere in the world, taken different paths to our respective dreams and careers in various corners of the world. But recently and thanks to technology, we decided to reconnect again – through a Yahoo! Group.

Alas, we had hardly gotten enough time to savor the joys of reconnection and recollection than tragedy crashed our little online party. One of the ‘kids’ lost his dad.

The rest of the group really wanted to reach out to him together to let him know his old high school friends were there for him through this time of pain. Unfortunately, there was no convenient and meaningful way to do this. If we were back in high school, we could easily get a greeting card, pass it around and then deliver it to him. Unfortunately, we were all at different corners of the world and so this would be infeasible at best.

Well it seemed like a problem. But being passionate about problem solving and technology, I figured there should be a solution out there… and so TownNote was conceived.

TownNote enables people dispersed in time and space to collaborate and send a special greeting or message to someone (or many ones) wherever they may be. It could be difficult reasons like the loss of a loved one, or needing a little encouragement. It could also be in times of great joy and excitement like birthdays, graduations, new baby, weddings and engagement. It’s really for any occasion like letting your mom or grandma know how much you all appreciate her. It makes it possible to do online an activity that we take for granted in real life because of its simplicity in that realm. Using TownNote, a family, group of friends, former classmates, can still share TOGETHER the important, critical, and/or memorable occasions in each other’s life. 

Now as things turned out,  I wasn’t able to get TownNote.com up and running in time to be used by my former schoolmates and I. However, and definitely unfortunately, another ‘kid’ in the group also lost his Dad. Yup, when it rains it pours. Anyway, this time we banded together and sent him a sympathy TownNote. As you can imagine he was deeply moved. In his time of sorrow, for a moment he had that warm feeling that though we are many miles away we came together for him.

Now I hope most of our users will get to use TownNote for joyful occasions like those mentioned above. However, in times of sadness, it’s wonderful to know that TownNote provides a way to let those affected know that are in the thoughts and wishes of those who care about them.  

And so this very first blog post is dedicated in Memory of the fathers of my dear friends and colleagues…Chinedu and Obinna.