Taking ExploreHere on the road
When we first decided to visit Tulsa for their annual Road Fest conference, we weren't entirely sure what we wanted to do. We'd never built an event booth before, and the whole idea felt equal parts exciting and overwhelming.
There was plenty of brainstorming before we landed on our final idea. More than anything, we wanted our first booth to feel like ExploreHere, not just advertise it.
What even is Road Fest?
If you've never heard of it, imagine taking thousands of people who are passionate about Route 66, road trips, roadside attractions, classic cars, and Americana, then putting them all in one place for a weekend. There were vendors, speakers, exhibits, travelers swapping stories. This all took place in a gigantic expo center in the heart of Tulsa, with the iconic Golden Driller standing watch just outside.
Before the weekend had even started, it already felt like we'd found exactly the kind of people we built ExploreHere for.
It started with a map…
We started with the simplest idea: just getting a green tablecloth and a little sign, and talking with people about the app. We got more bold and considered creating a physical map handout showing Tulsa and the surrounding Route 66 landmarks and handing those out. On the wilder side, we thought about making a giant plywood Scout in an old Corvette where you could pose in the passenger seat and take a photo. After probably a week of throwing ideas around, we hit a core principle: whatever we did needed to focus around a map. ExploreHere, at it’s core, is a big map with cool points on it, and we wanted to bring that to life.
What makes a map?
We started again at the simplest option, buying a big paper map. Those can be beautiful, but they’re also often expensive and not particularly unique. Soon after we had the map idea, Wes mentioned he wanted to try laser cutting the map out of wood. We worked through the logistics of that and in the end each piece needed to be cut out separately in order to fit on the laser cutter. This wound up creating this huge magnetic puzzle that fit together to form the whole US. It was a novel, beautiful, and portable solution, which checked all our boxes. If you’d like to read more about how Wes made the map, he did a full write up here.
The game that started arguments
We didn’t just want people to look at the map, though. The goal was to make something exciting that people would want to engage with. For this, we had the idea of doing a Route 66-themed pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game. The idea was players would be given the name and photo of a Route 66 landmark, and they’d have to place a marker in the correct spot on the map. This was a bit of a challenge to get working correctly, but we ultimately were able to make wooden pieces representing the landmarks and have them attach magnetically to the map. It was a lot of fun to watch people try to figure out where certain landmarks were. There were plenty of arguments, wild correct guesses, and even a handful of Route 66 fans who immediately knew all the right answers.
Every souvenir needs a story
So now we had a map and a reason for people to engage with it. We knew we also wanted some QR codes and handouts for people to take home with them. We had a lot of ideas for multiple different handouts and business cards and photos for our game. Ultimately, we ended up combining all the ideas into one handout: a custom postcard series. We created one postcard for each of the game landmarks we’d chosen, which would serve as the “hint” for the game to help you figure out which state it belonged in. We wanted people to be able to continue their adventure after Road Fest, so we added a QR code on the back leading to our Route 66 self-guided tour. We were surprised by how much people loved the post cards, with multiple people even asking for full sets or extras for their loved ones.
We accidentally built a cabin
Now that we had so much momentum behind the event, we wanted to wrap everything up in the spirit of adventure and exploration that ExploreHere tries to nurture. At this point, we knew the booth couldn’t just be pipe-and-drape curtains with a little ExploreHere logo somewhere. And I had a vision of a Wes Anderson-esque cabin plopped into the middle of the expo center, complete with all the trappings to make passers-by feel like they'd stumbled into the base camp of an explorer.
That idea snowballed. Suddenly we were collecting antique travel gear, dusting off old maps, printing Polaroids, building wooden walls for our “cabin” (complete with window that showed nature scenes playing on a TV behind.
The moment that made everything feel real
For the last few years, ExploreHere has mostly lived inside our laptops. We spend our days writing code, editing stories, answering support emails, watching analytics dashboards, and trying to make the app a little better every week.
Road Fest was different.
We got to meet a ton of people who loved Route 66, loved road trips, loved exploring. Handing out post cards to these people didn’t feel like sales, it felt like giving them a gift they’d go home and stick on their fridge. For the first time ever, people walked up to us already knowing about ExploreHere - a few people already had it downloaded on their phones. It's hard to describe how surreal that felt.
Building software often feels strangely abstract. You spend months working on features without ever seeing the people using them. You think about your users every day but rarely have a chance to meet them. You see the numbers and know people are out there using the app on road trips but never get to ask them about their experience.
Meeting someone who had used ExploreHere on their way to Road Fest made everything we’ve been building feel tangible in a way it never had before.
Gratitude
We honestly went all out with Road Fest. It was our first event and Wes and I wanted to do something special. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near possible without an incredible amount of help from friends and family. I’d like to give some particular shout-outs to some of the wonderful people who helped us:
Our friend and designer Ally designed and made the game pieces (amongst other things), drove down from Arkansas to help set up and run the booth, did a ton of organization on the booth to make it feel homey and flow nicely, made a last-minute hand-drawn sign for the front of the booth, and even made a plushy of Scout as a surprise!
My father-in-law and my wife built the walls and window and made sure everything was sturdy enough for my over-the-top safety standards.
My wife also curated the decorations from a huge pool of options, and made a spreadsheet for tracking what everyone needed to bring and what belonged to whom.
My mom provided a ton of the decorations as well as the old-fashioned candy we handed out. She also helped run the booth, and her sales skills really bootstrapped the group and helped us feel more at ease talking with people.
My brother was crucial for the loading and transport of all the bits and pieces that made up the booth. He also hand-painted the large ExploreHere sign that hung at the top of the booth!
I’m extremely thankful for all the support we received, and I’m positive that Wes and I would have been sitting there with a tablecloth and a little paper sign if it weren’t for the help our friends and families provided.
What we took home
By Sunday afternoon we were exhausted, the candy bowl was nearly empty, the postcards had mostly disappeared, and the booth we'd spent weeks building was packed back into boxes.
Road Fest reinforced something we've been feeling for a while: the goal isn't to put every interesting place in the world onto a map, it’s about helping people notice the places that make a trip memorable. It’s about feeling that sense of adventure, and experiencing what’s unique about this spot in the world.
If you stopped by to say hello, thank you so much for being a part of Road Fest for us.
Either way, we'll see you somewhere down the road.
-Jase
