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One night while walking his dogs, Sudbury dad Michael Oxton looked up at the sky and it piqued his curiosity. Oxton, who co-founded Night Shift Brewing and now runs the pet health startup Everfur, turned that curiosity into Outside Now, a free daily list of what’s worth seeing outside, from meteor showers and migrating birds to programs at local wildlife sanctuaries. We asked Oxton how it works, what his kids think, and where it’s headed next.
You mentioned the spark for this was wanting to help your kids and yourself appreciate the local surroundings. What made you realize this could be a daily resource not just for your family, but for all of Sudbury?
It all started one night when I was walking my dogs. I looked up at the sky and thought, there’s probably so much interesting stuff happening up there every night that I have no idea about (meteor showers, visible planets, the space stations passing overhead, etc.). If I knew more about it, I could appreciate it and talk to my kids about it. How cool would that be? My wife and I are always looking for interesting things to talk to them about, anything that encourages them to be curious.
That got me thinking: what else is happening around here that’s super cool, and I have no idea? Once I dug in, I realized it’s way more than the night sky. There’s what’s going on in the woods, what the birds are doing, what changes with the seasons, and all the programs at places like Drumlin Farm.
I figured, if I had no clue about all this, there must be others just like me. I can’t be alone! So why not share it? Since I posted the outsidenow.site link on the Sudbury Bulletin Board, over 100 people have signed up. Nice to know that I’m not the only one!
Tracking what the birds are up to, what’s turning color, and which pond is actually worth visiting every single morning requires some serious local intelligence. How do you go about gathering this daily hyper-local knowledge?
It took some research and time to set it all up, but now I have a pretty solid system in place, at least for the Metro West area. With the help of some AI tools, I built a system that does the legwork and research. It pulls the local forecast, what’s in the sky that night, river levels, and event calendars from places like Mass Audubon, Sudbury Valley Trustees, and the state parks. Then it checks all of that against a library of local nature happenings, each backed by real sources like Mass Audubon or UMass Extension. I read, edit and rate the reports every day, and my wife gives me great feedback too. That’s how it (hopefully) keeps getting better.
One note on AI. Part of my motivation is – how do you use AI to get people AWAY from screens? There’s a lot of justified fear about AI tying us closer to our screens, dehumanizing us, speeding us up and pulling us out of the present. I love the irony of using AI for the opposite: sparking curiosity, getting us outside, and getting us wondering about the world around us instead of what’s on our phones.
Since the goal is a short morning list that pushes people outside, how do you design the content so it acts as a quick springboard into nature rather than just another newsletter to endlessly scroll through over coffee?
Part of it is personal. I want bite-sized facts myself. Nothing against a deep read when the topic calls for it, but for this, I want a quick morning snapshot I can digest within a minute. I think most people are the same.
The goal is to give you a few things to go do, not bury you in content. Each card is one thing: where, when, how long. Most need no drive, no ticket and no gear. Read it, then go talk to someone about it, or look for it yourself (you can also save things for later with an account – free on the site) But generally – if the daily feed takes more than a couple of minutes to read, I’ve done it wrong.
Since your kids were the original inspiration, what has their verdict been? Have they discovered a favorite local trail or sky phenomenon through your research that they would have completely missed otherwise?
Kids are so funny. I shared today’s featured highlight with them – “Shaggy mane mushrooms melt into black ink within a day” – and what do I get? So many more questions! “Why do they do that? Can I see one? How tall are they? Is that one? Ink you could write with? Is it poisonous? Do mushrooms have roots?” The site half-answered a couple of these, but I had to do extra digging to give them better answers. And that got me thinking about little improvements I could make to Outside Now. The takeaway: kids are the best beta testers.
I noticed the zip code option at the top of the feed. Do you have plans to expand?
Yes, definitely. Right now it covers MetroWest, towns within about 30 minutes of Sudbury, and you can set your zip so drive times are (roughly) from your house. If you’re farther out, sign up anyway and add your zip. I’m keeping track of them and will let you know when your area is covered, and those zips also tell me where to go next. I’m hoping to cover all of Massachusetts by mid-October. Don’t think it’ll be too hard, but we’ll see.
I’d also love to hear from readers. If there’s something you want covered, a source I should be using, or a local group worth featuring, email me at hello@outsidenow.site. Down the line, I’d like to add some personalization too. Say you’re really into fishing, or you have a dog – would be great to tailor your feed to personalized interests.
[Feature image credit: Outside Now]