At the end of April, a group of like-minded individuals in Kansas City got together for an event called “Startup Weekend“. The result? “Rare Brew – an Online Tea Community”

According to the site, “Rare Brew is an online tea-lover’s community and shop designed to connect visitor with local & international tea experts and online reviews of tea from around the world.” Even more amazing is this: “In the course of 54 hours, a concept for an online tea community has gone from ideation to full launch – the blogs our up, our logo is polished, and tea is ready to ship to our customers’ doors. All in all, we couldn’t have asked for a better group of team members, facilitators and sponors to help us launch Rarebrew.com.”

I’ve just signed up, and look forward to seeing if the site’s functionality and content will make this tea community truly unique to others – so far so good. Something new to what I’ve experienced on other sites – users can create personal “blogs” on the site (powered by WordPress within the site – all blog URLs start with http://www.rarebrew.com – hello link-juice!) to write about different topics, and members can communicate publicly via “wires”, which are similar to “walls” on other social networks.

The site also features a “World Tea Experience. A Tea of the Month Program” You can learn more about this program by clicking the link here . Interesting  attempt to monetize content. The potential for success is there, if the site can both gain the readership and insure the tea of the month is alluring to both novices and enthusiasts.

Outside of some typos and a small glitch here and there (example – according to the site I joined the site 1 years, 12 months ago) it’s an interesting site.  More over, as a part of the Baltimore tech community, I continue to be impressed by local “tech savvy” groups like “Startup Weekend” encouraging members of their communities to get together to create unique ventures of their own.

Ps. My username at http://www.rarebrew.com is AJ Schwarz, if you’d like to follow.

Pps. Safe time to plug my upcoming presentation on Tea at Ignite Baltimore #3? I thought so too…