Archive for March, 2014

Application Refined Version 3.0 – Sami

Posted by Samantha Kanza in Welcome and Project Brief on March 13, 2014

Event Features

The results from our business and pleasure event analysis showed that the most common features that would be useful to both business and pleasure events were:

  • group travel
  • multiple travel organisation (aka train then taxi)
  • weather forecast information

These therefore are the main features that will be offered in the first version of our application. Future features will include:

  • local area info
  • accomodation
  • venue booking

Login Features

In the interest of breaking down the barriers between different social networks, this application will allow logging in/signing up, in multiple different ways. In the initial version of our application login will be facilitated through:

  • Login with Facebook [1]
  • Login with Google Plus [2]
  • Login with Twitter [3]
  • Sign up to our site and create an account to login with

This means that if someone has a social networking account with any of those platforms they can still login to our application without having to create a new account.

Additionally guests can be invited to events who don’t have an account by their email address, and they will receive a link to view the event at.

In the same vein as our advertising features, this social networking app is about providing a service, and is less about collecting lots of data about the users. FOAF [4] could be used to facilitate working out who knows who for each event to  make the travel planning easier, and an Address book importer [5] could be used to extract an event planners contacts to make the invite process easier.

References

[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/
[2] https://developers.google.com/+/web/signin/
[3] https://dev.twitter.com/docs/auth/sign-twitter
[4] http://www.foaf-project.org/
[5] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87408/get-contacts-from-email-account

, , , , , , , ,

No Comments

Business Model – Jokha & Sami

Posted by Jokha Al Adi in Mockups and Ideas on March 12, 2014

There are many ways that our social networking application could be used to generate revenue. Advertising is an obvious revenue stream, although it is important that whatever advertising is added to our application (even for the purposes of a ‘freemium’ esque model) is relevant to the app itself. Relevant advertising could include travel and accommodation, and information about local stores and points of interest in the area the event is taking place.

Guidance
Some people would be prepared to pay for better advice, particularly if they are attending an event abroad e.g Italy. Our app could provide our users with advice about Italian hotels, Guide offices, prices for visiting points of interest such as the Vatican and much much more [1]. Moreover, our app could also detail people with the weather forecast information for the event, in addition to useful transportation information and pricing.

Targeted Advertising
Advertising could also be targeted based on the type of event a user is going to. For example if they are going to a meal with friends, and they have set their start location as their home address, perhaps our application could provide offers on restaurants in their area [2]. The beauty of this type of targeted advertising is that it wouldn’t revolve around storing and repurposing the users information, it would purely be based on the current event that is being organised. This could work for all the varieties of events that our application offers (e.g business and pleasure).

Promotion Advertising
In addition to getting people to pay for general advertising on our application (which would be distributed to the relevant audiences) specific travel companies could also pay to be promoted within our application. For instance specific taxi companies could pay to have their taxi number promoted for all people in that area wanting to travel by taxi.

Booking Referrals/Extras
Companies might also pay for booking referrals, for instance if a taxi was booked through our app.
In the same vein as “in game purchases” our application could offer extras such as upgrades to first class travel where we would receive a certain payment for facilitating this purchase.

No Advertising App
There are some people who won’t want advertising in their app however relevant it might be. For those people we could offer a “pay for” app that doesn’t have advertising. That way we could collect purchase revenue for each person who wanted that kind of app.

Promotion
An essential step towards commercialising our application is to promote it. This could also be done via the use of social networks, for instance it could be advertised on Facebook or a blog could be produced illustrating how it works with a video [3]. In addition it is important to advertise this to people who don’t use social networks as well, so that they can understand how they may use the application without having to sign up for it. This could be done through TV or magazine advertising.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2012/01/20/why-you-need-a-travel-agent-part-1/
[2] http://www.ican.org.uk/da/Support-us/Fundraising%20Events/Arrange%20your%20own%20event.aspx
[3] http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229305

, , , , , , , , , ,

No Comments

Pleasure Events – Sami

Posted by Samantha Kanza in Scenarios and Personas on March 10, 2014

This post contains information about the type of pleasure events that our social network could support.

Parties
Definitions

  • A gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socialising, conversation, or recreational activities.

Examples:

  • Birthday party: celebrating the birthday of a specific person.
  • Graduation party:  celebrating somebody’s graduation from university (or college).
  • Dinner party: a gathering where everybody gets together at one person’s house and that person traditionally cooks for them.

Travel

  • If it’s not a local party then multiple travel options may need to be coordinated such as train and taxi if the location isn’t close to a station.
  • If it is local taxis or walking or busses could be coordinated in groups.

Accommodation

  • Party in the same place – no accommodation needed
  • Party in different city where you can return that day- no accommodation needed
  • Party far away where it would be difficult to return the same day – accommodation needed

Venue

  • These come with venues included such as restaurants and pubs or the hosts home.

Local Area Info

  • Might want suggestions of places to meet other friends in this city .
  • Might need shops options for buying gifts or flowers.

Weather Forecast

  • Possibly less needed here as most parties involve staying inside but people planning to walk may want this information.

Concerts

Definitions

  • A concert is a live performance (typically of music) in front of an audience.

Examples:

  • Theatrical
  • Concert Tour

Travel

  • Might need to organise group travel or organise group in the same city

Accommodation

  • Not necessary for a one day event

Venue

  • These come with venues included.

Local Area Info

  • Probably not needed here as will be scheduled  by Concerts

Weather Forecast

  • Needed outdoor Concerts

Family Events

Definitions

  • Weddings

  • Christenings

Travel

  • Multiple travel options may need to be coordinated such as train and taxi if the location isn’t close to a station.

Accommodation

  • Most likely needed for a Wedding as people tend to stay over unless they are local.

  • Less likely for a Christening which tends to be a day event.

Venue

  • These come with venues included.

Local Area Info

  • Probably not needed here

Weather Forecast

  • Possibly useful for outdoor events.

Festivals

Definitions

  • This is generally a music based event that runs across several days, where it is typical for lots of people to camp for the duration.

Travel

  • Group or Solo Travel will be needed.

Accommodation

  • A lot of people camp at festivals but that could be arranged via our social network, or they might wish to stay in a hotel.

Venue

  • These come with venues included.

Local Area Info

  • Probably not needed here as people will be busy at the festival.

Weather Forecast

  • Festivals are generally outdoors so this would be needed.

Travel

Accomodation

Venue

Local Area Info

Weather Forecast

Concerts

✔

✔

Parties

✔

✔

✔

✔

Family Events

✔

✔

✔

Festivals

✔

✔

✔

 

, , , , , , , , , ,

No Comments

Business Events – Sami

Posted by Samantha Kanza in Scenarios and Personas on March 9, 2014

This post contains information about the type of business events our social network would cater for.

Conferences
Definitions

  • A conference is a meeting of people who “confer” about a topic.
  • Academic conference, in science and academia, a formal event where researchers present results, workshops, and other activities.
  • Business conference, organized to discuss business-related matters.

Travel

  • Probably need multiple types of transport (unlikely that a train or a bus will run directly to the conference location, and you may have to fly there first) – needs coordination!

Accommodation

  • Most conferences aren’t local so chances are people will need accommodation.

Venue

  • These come with venues included.

Local Area Info

  • Might need entertainment options for guests you’ve brought with you.
  • Might want suggestions of places to eat in the evenings if the conference doesn’t provide food, or if you are staying on afterwards.

Weather Forecast

  • Possibly less needed here as most conferences involve staying inside.
  • However guests might want this information.

Training/Teambuilding Weekends

Definitions

  • Team building refers to a wide range of activities, presented to businesses, schools, sports teams, religious or nonprofit organizations designed for improving team performance. Team building is pursued via a variety of practices, and can range from simple bonding exercises to complex simulations and multi-day team building retreats designed to develop a team (including group assessment and group-dynamic games), usually falling somewhere in between.

Travel

  • Will need to organise group travel.

Accommodation

  • Normally comes included if it’s sold as a multi day team building retreat

Venue

  • These tend to come with venues included.

Local Area Info

  • Probably not needed here as activities will be scheduled

Weather Forecast

  • Possibly needed for outdoor activities

Business Day Events

Definitions

  • Induction Days
  • Presentation Days
  • Seminars
  • Workshops

Travel

  • Will need to organise group travel, also same day return travel.

Accommodation

  • Not necessary for a one day event.

Venue

  • Will need some sort of venue for this.

Local Area Info

  • Probably not needed here

Weather Forecast

  • Probably not needed here

Academic (Universities/Schools)

Definitions

  • Presentation Days

  • Seminars

  • Workshops

Travel

  • Will need to organise group travel, also same day return travel.

Accommodation

  • Not necessary for a one day event.

Venue

  • Will need some sort of venue for this.

Local Area Info

  • Probably not needed here

Weather Forecast

  • Probably not needed here

 

Comparison Table

Travel

Accomodation

Venue

Local Area Info

Weather Forecast

Conferences

✔

✔

✔

✔

Training/ Teambuilding

✔

✔

Business Events

✔

✔

Academic Events

✔

✔

 

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

No Comments

Application Refined Version 2.0 – Sami

Posted by Samantha Kanza in Welcome and Project Brief on March 3, 2014

After looking at the related academic work and exploring the different sites that already existed, it seemed like our idea really had a competitive advantage in that we couldn’t find other social networking applications or indeed event organisation sites that quite offered the service ours would.

Building from that different event types were discussed and from looking at the way other sites had been split (including sites that weren’t even event sites) it became clear that there was an obvious Business/Pleasure split for the different types of events our application could cater for.

The next few blog posts will be exploring the different needs of business and pleasure applications to work out which features would be most useful for our application.

, ,

No Comments

Links to related news items in the tech media: Events…Everywhere! – Jokha & Sami

Posted by Jokha Al Adi in Links to Related News Items in the Tech Media on March 2, 2014

This post looks at related news items to our social networking application.

The Travel Industry is Growing [1]
It has been reported that the global travel industry is set to grow at a sustained rate throughout the next decade. Our social networking application is focused on bringing people together, and enabling them to travel to their events together. If this industry is growing, therefore implying that more and more people are travelling around the world, then our application would be appealing to an ever growing market of travellers.

Event Management Applications are proving successful [2]
Eventbrite is an event management application that allows you to create events, promote them, and sell tickets for them, and it has proven to be very successful. “In 2013 alone, Eventbrite processed nearly 60 million tickets in 187 countries, totalling more than $1 billion in gross ticket sales.” Obviously our social networking application does differ from this (as described in our previous post) in that it is about organising the event and organising the travel, instead of selling tickets for the event. However, it does show that there is clearly a market for event based applications, and that even though there are social networks that cater to event management very well such as Facebook, there is scope to approach this organisation from different angles, like Eventbrite have, and like we intend to do.

Twitter and Facebook and Events [3]
Twitter and Facebook offer some useful event organisation features, such as being able to track RSVP numbers (Facebook) and Tweeting about your event to attract interest (Twitter). Our social networking application will allow you to track number of attendees to your event, and in addition people will be able to sign into our application using their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Therefore there is the potential to link these accounts more comprehensively with the events such that people could tweet about them.

Event Organisation is Trending [4,5]
Scheduling and arranging various kinds of events are one of the the most apparent trends these days. It is underlined by IT vendors who are evaluating this trend and deploying some ideas about events. Microsoft is establishing Microsoft Public Safety & Justice Event Series which is about creating events which serve to solve problems related to crimes and safety.

Conclusion
These news stories illustrate that there is a market for both event and travel based applications, and also illustrate the importance of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter in making these events a success. Our social networking application aims to provide both event planning and travel organisation services, in addition to allowing people to sign in from multiple social networking accounts, and invite people to their events who don’t have any social networking accounts. This also means that people can use our application without having to add yet another social networking account/profile to their web presence, which they may not want to do.

References
[1] http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/Articles/2014/04/02/47522/global-travel-industry-set-for-period-of-sustained-growth-says.html
[2] http://www.eventindustrynews.co.uk/2014/04/01/eventbrite-enables-people-world-plan-promote-sell-event/
[3] http://www.business2community.com/social-media/chicken-waffles-social-media-event-marketing-0826350#!Cw8A9
[4] http://www.microsoft.com/government/psj-events/Pages/about.aspx
[5] http://www.microsoft.com/government/ww/safety-defense/blog/Pages/post.aspx?postID=398&aID=22

, , , , , ,

No Comments

Related Academic Work – Sami

Posted by Samantha Kanza in Related Academic Work on March 2, 2014

There is a lot of academic work related to these topics:

FOAF – Friend of a Friend [1]
FOAF is the semantic web ontology that describes ‘who knows who’.
This could potentially be useful in our project as we are inviting people from various social networks, and also no social networks. FOAF could be used in the following ways:

  • Inviting people by URI
  • Like facebook events list out all of your friends as potential ‘invitees’, FOAF could be used to also list out the URI’s of people the event coordinator knows.
  • When it comes to the intelligent travel suggestions; FOAF could be used to align people who know each other into taxi/train groups.
  • Link together who knows who from different social networks.

Distributed Semantic Social Networks [2]
Our idea is not the first to address the issue of breaching the divide between different social networks. In 2011 Android created a mobile application to try and connect people from different social networks [2]. The Android Semantic Web Core Library and WebID content provider for Android were created to work in harmony to produce a distributed semantic social network for android mobile users. Building upon the FOAF suggestions from above, these libraries did indeed use FOAF to link together participants. It also used WebID to link together users from a number of different social networking applications. Users could use their WebID account to link together their skype, google plus accounts to a single WebID thus making a single login that contained unified information about an individual. This shows that there is clearly a need to unify this information; and whilst our application isn’t centered around this point, it is aiming to unite people across the borders of different social networks (and unlike existing applications) also looks to include people who aren’t part of a social network.

Semantic Web Services [3]
McIlraith, Cao Son, and Zeng float the idea of Automated Semantic Web Services for travel in their paper ‘Semantic Web Services’ where users could ask for things such as “Make the travel arrangements for my conference”. This shows that people have considered using the Semantic Web to create intelligent services such as sorting out travel arrangements. However, this doesn’t have the inclusive features of our idea as it doesn’t facilitate a group of people all trying to get to the same place from different start points.

Similar Systems
There are some systems out there for both intelligent travel planning and event planning:

  1. Intelligent Travel Planning (ITP) [4]  – A travel planner which allows the user to set both their travel and accommodation preferences and the system will for example organise their travel from the UK to Bermuda by their preferred method (e.g Flights/Taxis) and book them a hotel. However it does not seem to be linked to specific events, and like all of the other systems is lacking the facilities to do this for a group.
  2. Location Based Event Planner [5] – This made use of the ability to track other peoples phones using GPS if permitted to schedule events in two different ways: firstly specific events, and secondly spontaneous events based around users proximity to each other. This is a pretty neat application and does look to break down boundaries of not having to belong to a specific social networking group to belong.

Conclusion
There has been academic work done around different elements of our system: distributed social networks and an intelligent travel organiser. However, so far I have yet to find a system that does both in the same way that we plan to. Therefore it seems like hopefully we have stumbled upon a unique idea; or at least one that isn’t obviously too similar to anything else.

References
[1] http://www.foaf-project.org/.
[2] S. Tramp, P. Frischmuth, N. Arndt, T. Ermilov, and S. Auer. Weaving a Distributed, Semantic Social Net- work for Mobile Users. In 8th Extended Semantic Web Conference on the Semantic Web: Research and Applica- tions, volume Part I, pages 200–214, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011. ESWC’11, Spinger-Verlag.
[3] Sheila A McIlraith, Tran Cao Son, and Honglei Zeng. Semantic web services. IEEE intelligent systems, 16(2):46–53, 2001.
[4]  Zachary Pousman, Giovanni Iachello, Rachel Fithian, Jehan Moghazy, and John Stasko. Design iterations for a location-aware event planner. Personal and Ubiquitous Com- puting, 8(2):117–125, 2004.
[5]  David Camacho, Daniel Borrajo, and Jose M Molina. Intelligent travel planning: a mul- tiagent planning system to solve web problems in the e-tourism domain. Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, 4(4):387–392, 2001.

 

, , , , , ,

No Comments

Analysis of Existing Tools – Part 2 – Sami

Posted by Samantha Kanza in Analysis of Existing Similar Tools on March 2, 2014

This post is also about looking at existing tools that have similarities to our application. AppAppeal made a list of the top 34 free event planning application. This post will categorise these types of application and compare them to our social networking application to illustrate how they differ.

Group Event Organisation 

These applications are centered around organising events for specific groups. However, it doesn’t organise the transport element, and nor does it allow inclusion of people not on a social network.

Event Planning

These applications offer full event planning services, from creating websites for your events, helping with locations and vendors, and even organising invitations to the events. Kuandoo is by far the most similar application on this entire list to our social networking application, as it actually offers some form of transportation management by allowing people to organise car pools for the event. It also allows you to connect via Facebook. However, it is still lacking some of the features of our application that will allow you to be invited to an event even if you aren’t on a social network. and our intelligent travel algorithm will organise the best solutions for people’s travel preferences including trains, busses, taxis, etc, as opposed to just car pooling.

Invitation Design

These applications are designed to aid people with their invitations to events. They provide invitation templates and illustrations for people to use, and organise delivering and managing the invitations as well. Our social networking application organises the delivering of the invite, but purely as a plan text invitation. However this is because the main focus of our social networking application is to bring people together through the events as opposed to focusing on the inviting side.

Event Listing & Ticketing

These applications are predominantly focused on selling tickets to events. Our social networking application is focused on the social aspect of events where people create events for either their friends or colleagues, or people they have some form of connection to.

Event Location

These applications look at finding events for people to join in a specific location, and or matching a specific type of event. This is aimed at someone who is looking to go to events, where as our social networking application is focused on people who want to organise events.

Event Calendar

These applications provide calendars to enable people to see which events they and others are going to. Our social networking application will have a calendar of events, but they will be personalised to the user as opposed to letting everyone see everyone else’s events.

Event Scheduling

These applications are about enabling people to group together to jointly choose the best date for an event. This is something that our application does not include, and could be an interesting future consideration.

Social Network

These are social networking applications centered around events, Fyesta shares what you are doing with your friends, and Erly maps people based on the events/locations they go to. This shows that others are trying to make social networking applications out of events, neither of these ideas are that similar to our social networking application as ours enables creation of events and organises their travel, therefore it still has a unique edge to it even if there are other social networks created around events.

Seating Chart Manager

These applications are specifically focused on organising seating charts for events. This is not similar to our social networking application at all.

Other

These applications are also equally different to our social networking application as Zokos focuses on organising and paying for dinner parties before they occur, and Giveamonkey is an online gift listing site.

Conclusion
These event based applications vary greatly in their similarities to our social networking application. Several types of these applications such as the Social Network, Event Calendar, Event Planner and Group Event Organisation share similar features and ideas to our application, but overall none of them match what we aim to do. Even Kuandoo which is by far the most similar application differs from our social networking application in several ways, and offers less transportation based features than we intend to. Having studied 34 different event based applications, in addition to the previous post regarding similar tools, we have yet to come across an application that is really similar to ours and offers the same services. Therefore we still have a unique edge .

References
[1] http://www.appappeal.com/apps/event-planning

, , , , , ,

No Comments

Analysis of existing similar tools Part 1 – Why our idea has a unique perspective! – Someah & Sami

Posted by sssa1e13 in Analysis of Existing Similar Tools on March 2, 2014

In the past, making an event was a lengthy process; even if you only intended to invite your close friends. It involved making numerous phone calls, or sending group emails, or even posting individual invitation cards. Our idea, is to try and solve that issue by creating a social space for managing events; whereby events from different social networking events can be linked, and anyone, irrespective of whether they belong to a social network (or not!) can be invited.

The main services our social networking application provide are:

  • creating events
  • organising and coordinating travel to provide an intelligent travel organiser.
  • inviting friends to events (irrespective of whether they are on a social network or not

Below are some tools that provide similar services:

Event Websites

Facebook [1]
Facebook have made it very simple to create an event listing. You can create ‘Facebook Events’ and invite anyone on your friends list. However the downside to this is that you cannot invite people who aren’t on your Facebook friend list!
Our advantage: using our social networking application you can invite anyone irrespective of whether they are signed up to our network. 

Eventbrite [2]
Eventbrite is a site that is purely dedicated to organising events and even allows you to promote your event and organise tickets for it; and this don’t necessarily require you to have a social networking account to join these events.
Our advantage: our social networking application doesn’t just organise the event, it organises the travel too.

Travel Websites

TFL & National Rail & The Trainline [3,4,5]
These sites offer a ‘plan your journey’ service; whereby the user can input their start location, destination, and desired time of arrival/departure. They even offer a service where they will give you multiple options of transport (e.g tube/train/bus). It also allows you to purchase tickets on the site, in addition to giving you pricing information.
Our advantage: These services are for the individual, whereas our social space is for everyone; and only includes certain public transport options. Our users will input their start destination and preferred method of travel e.g Southampton, and Train. Our system will then suggest to all the ‘train-goers’ from Southampton that they get the same train together, and illustrate what group sharing options are available such as group train tickets. Similarly, for a local event several people who all opted to travel by taxi and live in the same postcode, would get the suggestion that they shared a taxi together.

Rome 2 Rio [6]
This sites enables you to plan a journey from anywhere in the world, and will provide you with the multiple coordinated travel resources that you need.
Our advantage: whilst this site seems similar to our social networking application by way of it’s travel organisation, it is missing the social networking element of our application. Our application provides a travel organisation service for groups of people all wanting to attend the same event even if they don’t necessarily know each other. 

Conclusion
There is a huge market for event based websites (based on the amount that already exist, and the popularity of Facebook events) and our idea will allow everyone to get involved; as well as providing them with easy cost effective travel solutions. Our idea clearly has a unique perspective as whilst there are websites and applications that are similar to certain parts of our social networking application, none of them combine social networking, with travel organisation.

References
[1] https://www.facebook.com/events/list
[2] https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/
[3] http://www.tfl.gov.uk/
[4] http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/
[5] http://www.thetrainline.com/
[6] http://www.rome2rio.com/

 

, , , , , ,

No Comments