Apply HN: EventCast – the simplest event planner | Hacker News Reader

Apply HN: EventCast – the simplest event planner

6 pointsfranzunix5 comments

EventCast is a simple, mobile application for event organization. In this era of app-fatigue we’ve sought to create a frictionless, bare-bones tool that satisfies the major needs of event organizers and guests (big and small).

Download EventCast and the first thing you will notice is that it is (relatively) anonymous. We never ask for a username or email. We track a device ID out of necessity. You can start using EventCast immediately, though.

Let’s say you are organizing a soccer tournament (or a wedding party, pub crawl, conference, festival). Create (+) an event and give it a unique HASHTAG code (or EventCast will do it for you). Then build out the agend. Team Alpha against Team Drumpf on Field A at 9:00am; Team Beta against Team Tesorio on Field B at 9:15am; etc. As an organizer, you’re done. You can share that hashtag code as you please through any media you like.

If you are attending the event, simply subscribe to the agenda using the HASHTAG code. You are then synced with the schedule. Any changes the organizer makes will automatically flow to all subscribers. It’s great for pop-up, surprise-location events, too. Once you’ve synced the agenda, you can customize the agenda to get notification for only those items you are interested in attending. Are you part of the Team Drumpf family? Just select those games and you’ll get notifications 15 minutes before the start of each of those games. The notifications will also provide directions from wherever you are to the destination.

Interestingly, we think, this is an application that you may never open after subscribing. You may “live” in the notification windows on your smartphone, which we think is pretty cool.

We look forward to your feedback:

Play Store - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eventcast

App Store - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eventcast-simplest-event-planner/id1069897109?mt=8

Demo - https://youtu.be/nFIDUYobQF4

Interesting take on social networking

How will you prevent abuse?

How will you make money? Buy the app? Pay for catchy hashtags?

Hashtags probably won't be unique, how do you control who gets what? What happens if user A and user B both use #soccer for their neighborhood game, but they aren't in the same neighborhood?

Must people use your app to subscribe? If not, how will you grow your userbase? If so, why would people bother?

- abuse is a concern. I'm hoping the disposable nature of the experience limits it. - there is a monetization strategy dependent on the user base. We want to offer helpful services (deeplinking or otherwise) that are location/context specific. - there is a white-labeling feature too for a smaller cash-flow. Let's say Red Bull wants to use it for a Fleugtag (sp) weekend of activities. - we're hoping the disposable nature of hashtags will allow for enough of a namespace. - You have to subscribe through EventCast. Growing the userbase will be THE challenge as this is a tool useful when you need it but otherwise dormant.

The early users, though, found it to be their go to app at the 4AsTransformations conference, for example.

Franze is a good friend an partner on this project. I've done a lot of the Android front-end and another friend, Lucas has built the iOS version. It has been a labor of love.

As an example, my family and friends are using EventCast this weekend at the USA Disabled Hockey Festival in Detroit. You can subscribe to #USADHFPatriotC, #USADHFAmericanC, or #USADHFYouthSledC for live examples.

If nothing else, I hope it helps someone have a wonderful event. We're also talking to some tourism folks to have a perpetual event. You could setup #VisitPhillly and the owner could continually update new items. Think of it as a "fun things to do feed".

Will you allow organizers to charge for events? For casual / free events, what's your vector of competition against Facebook event listings?

So we're thinking about an integration to EventBrite and TicketLeap as optional features after composing an event. Neither company's API (actually, I don't think TL has an API) considers sub-event data. So EventCast can essentially serve as an event authoring tool that can be pushed over to EventBrite (optionally) to enable ticket sales and other EventBrite features.

Competing against Facebook...If you are only inviting through the graph, it might be hard, but I think there are plenty of situations where organizers and guests are less well connected. Hmm.. LinkedIn...we're open to chatting :).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com