Evently — Find events, sign up, meet new people!

6 min readJun 27, 2023

This project was carried out as part of the TechLabs “Digital Shaper Program” in Dortmund (winter term 2022/23).

In a nutshell:

There are a ton of things to do in the Dortmund area… and a lot of people to do them with! However, gaining an overview of all available activities in the west-German student city can be difficult, especially for people new to the area. The goal of Evently is to connect people in Dortmund that share common interests. Users of the website are given an extensive list of nearby activities and can search for events from different categories (e.g., sports, arts, etc.), sign up for them, and see who else will be attending that same event.

Introduction:

Dortmund has a population of around 600.000, of which over 9% are students. Despite its student-city status, settling in as a newcomer and meeting new friends can be difficult. The Covid-crisis and the social restrictions that followed have made it even more challenging to have social encounters and make new friends, especially for students who are not from the area. The move from the lecture hall to online classes during the past few years and the subsequent reopening of social life has left many students in the Dortmund area with many activities, but few to no friends to perform them with. Moreover, the Covid years have shaped the way young generations interact, normalizing meeting friends online over the “old-fashioned”, in-person ice-breaking experience.

Evently is a website that captures this new time spirit by giving users an online platform on which to meet other users with shared interests and bond in real life by attending fun events in the Dortmund area. Evently’s hybrid online-offline approach facilitates the “breaking the ice” phase while also offering an easy overview of fun activities to share together with like minded people. With Evently, having an overview of activity options is really easy, whether one has lost their social skills due to the long quarantine periods or simply because they have just moved to Dortmund!

Methodology:

Which methods / tools from your learning tracks did you use to solve the problem? Our team was composed of five data scientists and one web developer. In the first team meeting, we shared our individual expectations for the project and brainstormed ideas. We used a Miro board to jot down our ideas regarding the name of the website, its general functionalities, features, and design (https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPy6SbNc=/); we then defined the features required for a minimum viable product (MVP) and agreed on a project scope and a timeline.

The MVP was defined as such: Users will receive an overview of events in the Dortmund area and will be able to filter these by category (e.g., sports, arts, etc.). In a next step, we wanted to implement functions that would allow users to create their own events and interact with their friends (saved in a friends list) through the chat function. The website’s frontend design should be simple and easy to navigate.

Apart from the Miro board, we used Notion for storing and sharing information, Slack and Zoom for communicating, and GitHub and VS Code for creating the website code.

Following our timeline, we started by searching the web for datasets of events and activities in the Dortmund area, such as museums, event locations, swimming pools, and sports facilities. OpenData Dortmund offered us multiple useful data sets that we could easily manipulate to only include variables that served the purposes of the Evently website. Since we were fusing different datasets together, we had to refine the data accordingly. After cleaning the data, we were left with a .csv file containing 223 data rows with 5 columns each, containing the variables ID, Category, Name of Location, Link to Website, and Address. Our web developer created an initial draft of the website with only minor styles (Figure 1) with the goal of providing the team with a concrete vision and exemplifying the look and feel of Evently. Although very simple in design, the mock-up greatly helped align everyone on the final goal and the next steps to follow. The design was later substituted by a grid system, adding a card for each event. Moreover, to create events, a form was added.

After solving initial issues with VS Code within the team, we moved our attention to creating an API to connect the user/web browser to the database. Since our team had only one web developer and many data scientists, we decided to build the backend using Python. With the advice of our mentors, we identified FastAPI as the best web framework to use as it is easier to connect to a database.

Figuring out how to build the backend was one of the biggest challenges along the way, since none of us had any prior experience in this area. We finally managed to create an API that directly reads data from our .csv file and stores it in a database. Additionally, we implemented functions to manually add events to the data base, update, delete or filter them by their ID. This data could then be displayed in the browser via a GET-request. By fetching the data and using a script to manipulate the DOM, we connected the existing backend and frontend to have a functional Evently website (Figure 2).

Results:

In its present form, Evently is a website that through a simple interface offers users an overview of many events and activities in Dortmund, selectable according to their personal interests. It facilitates experiencing social life in the Dortmund area and holds the potential to connect people with one another. The website therefore offers a service that is especially necessary after the long-lasting social restrictions imposed during the Covid crisis and especially for students that are new to the Dortmund area.

In the future, the service could be expanded past the scope of this project, both on a quantitative and qualitative level. On a purely quantitative level — meaning the reach of the website — the geographical coverage could be extended past the area around Dortmund. Moreover, a language selection button would open the door for usage by people of different nationalities. In 2020, Germany was called “home” by 10.6 million foreigners.

On a qualitative level — meaning the variety of features of the website — there is a plethora of new features that could be added: event-review feature, more detailed filtering options (e.g., by date, by friends visiting, by proximity to users’ location…), matching feature by which users can view the list of friends visiting an event, advanced chat feature and many others.

In the long term, given its purpose to connect people, Evently would have to become an app for smartphones, a necessity for instantly communicating with friends that are meeting up for the same activity. Event organizers should be able to advertise their products and enter a conversation with their guests, collecting reviews, answering questions, and creating an emotional bond with Evently users which could last over multiple events. A follower- as well as a notification feature would facilitate this interaction between event organizers and guests even more. However, we believe that the focus should remain on connecting users with each other, giving them a platform to meet people with similar interests and — ideally — find life-long friendships.

Github repository:

https://github.com/TechLabs-Dortmund/evently

Team:

Emmanuel Ramirez (Data Science)

Jannik Verkely (Data Science)

Laura Städtler (Data Science)

Leonardo Biavati (Data Science)

Magnus Jeiter (Data Science)

Max Wedler (Web Development)

Mentors:

Nils Jannasch (Web Development)

Samuel Reichmann (Workspace Administrator)