The live local project officially greets the world today. To our pre-launch members, thanks for all your help and experimentation. To our new members: Hey, very glad you're here. Make yourself at home.

To kick things off, we had a few people over for dinner last night, and we've got some details and photos after the jump.

Our launch dinner was held at Table for 20 in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills. It's a wonderful space with a deliberately communal atmosphere and a commendable local focus. Everyone dines together at two long tables (each of which seats 20) and food is shared and passed around à la family dining table.

The dinner guests included gardeners, politicians, businesspeople, media personalities and behind-the-scenesters, sustainability experts, community organisers … and Chris Gaul and Jeremy Epstein, the designer and developer, respectively, of this site (who don't get nearly enough credit), and Kate Bedwell, who ran the event like a pro.

It all started with me doing my best impression of a talented MC. I then introduced Dave Gravina and Piers Dawson-Damer, who in turn introduced the project to the room.

Table for 20 owner Michael Fantuz then told us what we were eating. We had challenged him to make the meal as local as possible … which surely conflicted with his usual mandate to get the best food possible. So his description of the homemade food included the number of kilometres it had travelled to get to our tables. Michael wouldn't compromise on cheese – it travelled furthest, from Victoria (the closest place to get real buffalo mozzarella, it turns out); the tomatoes and basil came from Michael's father's garden, about 15 kilometres from Surry Hills. Not a bad effort, and a good learning experience.

The vibe in the room was superpositive, with 40 people who love communities sharing food and stories. Michael Mobbs, a sustainability consultant and (I'm assigning this title to him) community activist, gave a talk about his various projects in Chippendale; the rest of the room was wowed (and surely inspired) by his wry tales of local composting, stingless native bees, community gardening and more. The rest of the room was also probably scared by his contention that Australia will suffer food scarcity within the next 5 to 10 years.

After the most delicious pappardelle of my life (wow, there's some ironic distance between this paragraph and the previous one), I introduced Mickie Quick, an artist, designer and community activist who moonlights on Channel 10's Guerrilla Gardeners. He talked about the boundaries, both real and imagined, that hinder positive social change – communities have power to encourage creativity, but also to stifle it. Mickie's prescription for de-stifling, and for inspiring more vibrant communities in general, was to take risks. To try stuff. To experiment. Which is precisely what live local is about.

Finally, we introduced our first live local challengees, Rebecca Varidel and Kate Carruthers, who have embarked today on the first of seven straight days of trying to live locally. Both are twittering (Rebecca here and Kate here) and blogging about it (Rebecca here and Kate here) as they go.

Thanks to Table for 20 for the lovely venue and the community-friendly food. We had wine from Vinifera and Lowe Family and organic pale ale courtesy of Single Origin (the café just around the corner).

So, that's it. Now it's up to you. Let's get back to the work of putting together a resource of ideas and inspirations for Australians (and everyone else) to improve their neighbourhoods, re-engage with their communities, and take risks that help make a difference.