As you guys might know we’ve started a project that has grown over just a few months – TourChats.

The idea of a weekly web show was something we had been discussing when we watched a well known YouTube personality Hanna Hart of My Drunk Kitchen produced a live show using Vokle.com. She was talking about her show, but what really grabbed our attention was that she could take a typed in question or even a live video from the viewers. A light bulb went off – this would work great for our show!

In the beginning we had friends on from the cycling industry and talked pro cycling – good times. Then we started to look into our cycling Rolodex and book guests. I was interested in guests that would get the concept of the show – talk cycling, but have some fun doing it. If I wanted to hear they were having “good sensations” in the legs there were plenty of shows/podcasts, let alone reports, I could read.

As viewership grew we started to get requests to podcast TourChats. Initially, the only place you could see the show archived was either on the Vokle.com site or TouChats.com. So we started working on producing a podcast of the show and got it listed on iTunes. However, we quickly discovered that we would need additional bandwidth to accommodate the downloads of video files. We contacted our web host and estimates were adding up to a considerable cost. We also wanted to create some schwag for the viewers including t-shirts. This of course means funding.

We wrote a proposal for Kickstarter.com, a site that helps creative projects get funding. You might have seen a short demonstration video by revolights which made the rounds on Facebook. They received funding to get their innovative lighting system off the ground by getting donors from Kickstarter. Inspired by the cool way to get our fans involved in funding the show, Dan Wuori and I filmed a short “sizzle” reel to grab interest. We put together a list of Backer rewards that range from TourChats coasters to limited edition t-shirts to joining Dan and I for a bike ride on the US Pro road race course.

We were so happy to see the immediate support from our fans – so a big “thank you” to all those who contributed early as well as retweeted or shared in Facebook our Kickstarter campaign page. We’ll be giving away prizes all next week with our Kickstarter Backers entered in the random drawings to win.