Local by Reza Farzad

[catarinalouza]

What is your project's name?

Local

What's the problem you are trying to solve?

1. Small/less known/unknown musicians don’t have enough recognition
2. Music lovers aren’t connected to those musicians and informed about them enough
3. There isn’t a unique platform to familiarize them about these events
4. We need a platform for local music events around the city, with focus on small venues small bands/artists

What's your idea for a solution to the given "problem"?

Making a concert ticketing app/platform with up-to-date data about live music shows and performances in a city

Which tracks do you think could be involved?

DL/DS, WD

How do you imagine Deep Learning and/or Data Science could contribute to this project?

I’m not very familiar and I don’t have expertise in this area but I think data science would be crucial to gather data about all the events around the city. There should the need of data gathering and extraction perhaps, as well as manual data gathering from local café, bars and venues.

How do you imagine Web Development could contribute to this project?

I guess it would be crucial for creating the app or the website.

What are the most important challenges & bottlenecks of your project?

Gathering and managing data. Legal contracts, since there is sale and ticket generating involved. Also, legality; since there is sale involved, I think there should be legal contracts between our business partners, which are the venues. Money/percentage talk and all of that.

What are the most important success factors of your project?

1. More tickets purchased through the website
2. more visits, more usage
3. Getting among the top services known for people and among bars, venues and art/music communities for attending a music related event happening in there (like how ‘Uber Eats’ and ‘Wilt’ became a successful intermediator between the customer and the place)

Share your resources here:

Eventim and Ticketmaster are the famous concert booking platforms, but none of them focus on small and local musicians and venues

Would you like to add an optional Pitch deck to support your idea in 6 to 8 slides?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mxW4gy0fumEyA-mU9pDs9qCornA54W2loQf0O4Zq8eE/edit

[catarinalouza]

Hey @mahanfa, nice idea, thanks for submitting! We have a few notes on it!

Which tracks do you think could be involved? DL/DS, WD

You may have overlooked this since you are from the UX track yourself, but I imagine that you will need/want to work with other designers on this problem?

[catarinalouza]

We think your idea is definitely feasible if you make some adjustments.

In the project phase, you will start to work on an MVP and within ten weeks it will be only possible to create an early concept and some features which can then be demonstrated in your prototype in final presentations. Your success factors make total sense from a UX standpoint, but they might be confusing for whoever wants to join you working in this idea.

Here are some answers we need from your side:

• What's your gameplan to roll out your UX collaboration given you already shared some work you did? What specifically do you think you will need support with?
• What features do you want to prioritise building your platform? I would suggest you focus on the 4 points you mention in the 'What's the problem you are trying to solve?' question, but it would help you recruit other techies if you list down the exact features you want to include, ex: events coming up, recommended bands, etc.
• Other features you can think of including: login/authentication, reminders of events, perhaps a (dummy) ticket purchasing system, etc. Anything else might be out of scope for WD techies.

I will get someone to give you some pointers on how DL or DS techies can contribute too.

[mahanfa]

Hey @mahanfa, nice idea, thanks for submitting! We have a few notes on it!

Which tracks do you think could be involved? DL/DS, WD

You may have overlooked this since you are from the UX track yourself, but I imagine that you will need/want to work with other designers on this problem?

Hey Catarina! Thanks for your attention. Yes I do need other designers as well. thank you for correcting that.

[mahanfa]

We think your idea is definitely feasible if you make some adjustments.

In the project phase, you will start to work on an MVP and within ten weeks it will be only possible to create an early concept and some features which can then be demonstrated in your prototype in final presentations. Your success factors make total sense from a UX standpoint, but they might be confusing for whoever wants to join you working in this idea.

Here are some answers we need from your side:

• What's your gameplan to roll out your UX collaboration given you already shared some work you did? What specifically do you think you will need support with?
• What features do you want to prioritise building your platform? I would suggest you focus on the 4 points you mention in the 'What's the problem you are trying to solve?' question, but it would help you recruit other techies if you list down the exact features you want to include, ex: events coming up, recommended bands, etc.
• Other features you can think of including: login/authentication, reminders of events, perhaps a (dummy) ticket purchasing system, etc. Anything else might be out of scope for WD techies.

I will get someone to give you some pointers on how DL or DS techies can contribute too.

Thank you for your comment and guidance.

***** Listing down the features I want to include:

1. High Priority/Must-Have features:

   1. Lots of coming up events (being updated every day for the coming week)
   2. Providing many useful filters such as 'filtering'. events should be filtered by: date, time, location, place, cost, genre and so on.
   3. Login (having an account)

2. Nice-to-Have features:

   1. Provide information/bio about the artist that is performing.
   2. Show seating plan if available. (more necessary when it's a bigger venue/hall)
   3. If it’s a Bar/Restaurant, provide information on what type of food/drinks they offer generally.
   4. Send reminder of the event.

3. Low Priority features:

   1. Let user change the look of the application.
   2. Let user add/remove different filters.

And for the question of "What's your gameplan to roll out your UX collaboration given you already shared some work you did? What specifically do you think you will need support with?" I really don't know... Since I planned to over take the UX part of the project. I guess these things can be discussed further when someone is willing to join maybe? I don't have specific tasks in mind...

Bests

[catarinalouza]

Great, looks like you have it sorted in terms of prioritisation for UX research, features for the WD team to build and you'll need DS to help you get the data on the events!

Will move this project to 'accepted' stage! For team constitution, you should look for:

• [x] 1 UX Techie (this is you @mahanfa)
• [x] 1 UX Techie @anadespoiu
• [x] 1WD Frontend Techie @pioeberhard
• [ ] 1 WD Backend Techie
• [ ] 1 DS Techie
• [ ] 1 DS Techie

You can start "recruiting" for your team! If anyone is interested in joining this idea, drop a comment so we can assign you to this issue.

[pioeberhard]

Hey guys. I like the idea. I am a musician myself and know the community and the subject inside out. I would like to join as a WD but haven't yet decided whether I will go for the front or back end. I am rather inclined towards the front end for now. Cheers!!!

[catarinalouza]

Will add you for WD frontend @pioeberhard for now, if you change your mind, we can update!

[cnymz]

Hi Reza, I like your idea too. I was about to propose a project for a community-based concert tracker platform, specializing in little-known artists. But given the proximity of the two ideas, it seems more interesting to me to discuss with you before finalizing my proposal. I am currently enrolled in the DS course, so I had thought about the DS dimension of such a project.

One of the ideas was to offer a music recommendation feature to users. I was able to find quite rich Spotify datasets, on which it would theoretically be possible to apply machine learning models to build a recommendation system based on user preferences. So depending on the tastes (or maybe even the mood) of the user, the platform could offer an event/concert recommendation likely to please them.

Its same datasets could also help us in the classification of musical groups and artists according to genre and subgenre. Of course there are still many points that I would like to discuss with the responsibles for the DS track to clarify what I am proposing here... but would you be interested in such a contribution?

[cnymz]

Another point I would have liked to discuss with you concerns the information from the concerts themselves. Personally I don't know how to automate the information collection process. There are too many events to consider entering them manually. Do you have an idea on how to solve this problem ?

In the project that I planned to propose, the idea was to allow musicians and organizers to enter their data themselves. The idea being to offer them a tool so that they can communicate directly to a potentially interested audience. This seemed judicious to me, particularly for all free events or events which do not have ticket sales but an on-site entrance fee. Moreover, many of these events are not listed anywhere. This is what initially motivated my proposal. What do you think of this approach?

[anadespoiu]

Hi there! I would love to join this project as a UX Techie! :)

[mahanfa]

Hi there! I would love to join this project as a UX Techie! :)

Hi, Nice :)

[mahanfa]

Hey guys. I like the idea. I am a musician myself and know the community and the subject inside out. I would like to join as a WD but haven't yet decided whether I will go for the front or back end. I am rather inclined towards the front end for now. Cheers!!!

Hi, nice :) Interesting, I'm also a musician. I'm happy to be working together on this project.

[mahanfa]

Hi Reza, I like your idea too. I was about to propose a project for a community-based concert tracker platform, specializing in little-known artists. But given the proximity of the two ideas, it seems more interesting to me to discuss with you before finalizing my proposal. I am currently enrolled in the DS course, so I had thought about the DS dimension of such a project.

One of the ideas was to offer a music recommendation feature to users. I was able to find quite rich Spotify datasets, on which it would theoretically be possible to apply machine learning models to build a recommendation system based on user preferences. So depending on the tastes (or maybe even the mood) of the user, the platform could offer an event/concert recommendation likely to please them.

Its same datasets could also help us in the classification of musical groups and artists according to genre and subgenre. Of course there are still many points that I would like to discuss with the responsibles for the DS track to clarify what I am proposing here... but would you be interested in such a contribution?

Hey Can, Thanks for writing. Had you already proposed your idea? and if so, is it submitted somewhere so I can see it?

About the idea to offer a music recommendation feature, I'm not fond of that. The same reason I'm not fond of the Spotify feature. Artists would be filtered through an algorithm, and the big ones or the 'similar' ones get noticed and the smaller ones or the ones who offer different music, don't. I wanted this platform to be as liberal and as righteous as possible.

If we or the algorithm recommend someone, it means that we are not recommending someone else. I want everyone to be the same, have the same place and opportunity on the platform, and it is on the user to decide what they want. I'm not saying your idea is bad, not at all, it is being implemented on almost all platforms, but it doesn't match with my ideology and goal, and I think we'd be better without it. However as I proposed, I have filtering and categories through genre which is very important for the sake of categorization. That let's the user to select what type of music he/she wants to listen and attend. Not what artist. That would be one them.

(I answer your next comment in the next reply)

[mahanfa]

Another point I would have liked to discuss with you concerns the information from the concerts themselves. Personally I don't know how to automate the information collection process. There are too many events to consider entering them manually. Do you have an idea on how to solve this problem ?

In the project that I planned to propose, the idea was to allow musicians and organizers to enter their data themselves. The idea being to offer them a tool so that they can communicate directly to a potentially interested audience. This seemed judicious to me, particularly for all free events or events which do not have ticket sales but an on-site entrance fee. Moreover, many of these events are not listed anywhere. This is what initially motivated my proposal. What do you think of this approach?

About receiving data: since I'm not a Data or WD techie, I honestly have no idea how this would work. How to gather data from the already existing data on the internet. And then the manual thing which requires time, energy and team. And perhaps lawyers for contracts and data privacy stuff and ... Perhaps we can't get to that level because of the recourses and complexity of the situation. But I think at least the automated data collection would be possible. How? I think the Data Science people would know.

And about the last idea to let musicians and organizers enter the data themselves and manually, I had thought about it and I like it very much. It seems very reasonable. The only reason that I did not put it in my proposal originally, was that for this, we need the platform to bomb (get famous) to have enough data. Because if not, it would be something like 10 people inserting their data and then 10 people seeing it. This way we would completely depend on musicians entering their data. I wanted to make a big information desk from the beginning, that it's so complete that builds trust from the first stages and attracts people. It would be 'the source' from the beginning for many people. But if that is very difficult and almost impossible to execute, yes maybe we can let go of it for the sake of the execution of the project, at least in the TechLabs phase. It would be easier to run and friendlier. The independent participation makes it even more user-friendly and neutral.

Overall, I am please that you are interested in the project and it's interesting that you had the same -or more or less the same- idea. If you think we can match, I'd be happy to be teammates.

[cnymz]

Hi Reza, I like your idea too. I was about to propose a project for a community-based concert tracker platform, specializing in little-known artists. But given the proximity of the two ideas, it seems more interesting to me to discuss with you before finalizing my proposal. I am currently enrolled in the DS course, so I had thought about the DS dimension of such a project. One of the ideas was to offer a music recommendation feature to users. I was able to find quite rich Spotify datasets, on which it would theoretically be possible to apply machine learning models to build a recommendation system based on user preferences. So depending on the tastes (or maybe even the mood) of the user, the platform could offer an event/concert recommendation likely to please them. Its same datasets could also help us in the classification of musical groups and artists according to genre and subgenre. Of course there are still many points that I would like to discuss with the responsibles for the DS track to clarify what I am proposing here... but would you be interested in such a contribution?

Hey Can, Thanks for writing. Had you already proposed your idea? and if so, is it submitted somewhere so I can see it?

About the idea to offer a music recommendation feature, I'm not fond of that. The same reason I'm not fond of the Spotify feature. Artists would be filtered through an algorithm, and the big ones or the 'similar' ones get noticed and the smaller ones or the ones who offer different music, don't. I wanted this platform to be as liberal and as righteous as possible.

If we or the algorithm recommend someone, it means that we are not recommending someone else. I want everyone to be the same, have the same place and opportunity on the platform, and it is on the user to decide what they want. I'm not saying your idea is bad, not at all, it is being implemented on almost all platforms, but it doesn't match with my ideology and goal, and I think we'd be better without it. However as I proposed, I have filtering and categories through genre which is very important for the sake of categorization. That let's the user to select what type of music he/she wants to listen and attend. Not what artist. That would be one them.

(I answer your next comment in the next reply)

Sorry Reza, it took me a while to respond to you. In the meantime, I proposed my project so as not to miss the deadline. If you want to take a look: https://github.com/TechLabs-Berlin/project_proposals/issues/20

Overall, I think we agree on the problem of lack of recognition and exposure for lesser known musicians and smaller events. Perhaps it is in the solutions that we take different approaches. I understand your point of view on recommendation systems, even if I think that it is possible, on the contrary, to deploy them in such a way as to give visibility to lesser-known artists.

It’s a shame we didn’t have the opportunity to discuss the issue sooner. Perhaps we could have matched the two proposals...

[cnymz]

Another point I would have liked to discuss with you concerns the information from the concerts themselves. Personally I don't know how to automate the information collection process. There are too many events to consider entering them manually. Do you have an idea on how to solve this problem ? In the project that I planned to propose, the idea was to allow musicians and organizers to enter their data themselves. The idea being to offer them a tool so that they can communicate directly to a potentially interested audience. This seemed judicious to me, particularly for all free events or events which do not have ticket sales but an on-site entrance fee. Moreover, many of these events are not listed anywhere. This is what initially motivated my proposal. What do you think of this approach?

About receiving data: since I'm not a Data or WD techie, I honestly have no idea how this would work. How to gather data from the already existing data on the internet. And then the manual thing which requires time, energy and team. And perhaps lawyers for contracts and data privacy stuff and ... Perhaps we can't get to that level because of the recourses and complexity of the situation. But I think at least the automated data collection would be possible. How? I think the Data Science people would know.

And about the last idea to let musicians and organizers enter the data themselves and manually, I had thought about it and I like it very much. It seems very reasonable. The only reason that I did not put it in my proposal originally, was that for this, we need the platform to bomb (get famous) to have enough data. Because if not, it would be something like 10 people inserting their data and then 10 people seeing it. This way we would completely depend on musicians entering their data. I wanted to make a big information desk from the beginning, that it's so complete that builds trust from the first stages and attracts people. It would be 'the source' from the beginning for many people. But if that is very difficult and almost impossible to execute, yes maybe we can let go of it for the sake of the execution of the project, at least in the TechLabs phase. It would be easier to run and friendlier. The independent participation makes it even more user-friendly and neutral.

Overall, I am please that you are interested in the project and it's interesting that you had the same -or more or less the same- idea. If you think we can match, I'd be happy to be teammates.

Completely agree that the solution of letting users submit events should be coupled with personal collection of events. We are in the same boat on the question of data. In the end, if we don't find a way to automate the extraction of event data, it will be a matter of entering enough data manually to be able to produce the MVP and find a solution later. . :)

[Mananosrati]

Hi Mahan! That is a nice idea, I would like to join your team as a UX member.

[mahanfa]

Hi Mahan!

That is a nice idea, I would like to join your team as a UX member.

hi Mana, Awesome, welcome!