I really like that it's not a "platform," where I have to have an account or RSVP to you and then separately for the event. That's the last thing an aggregator needs to be.
I can offer some advice based on my own research for a future Austin UX redesign.
If you're just naively accepting various Meetup and Eventbrite organizer feeds, I think you need curation options. I don't add every event that every design-related meetup puts on, for a variety of reasons.
Lots of events don't have Meetup or Eventbrite listings. ATXDribbble and Ladies That UX ATX organize primarily on Twitter. UX Book Club Austin and my old meetup organizes on Facebook. Being able to link to multiple links for an event is useful.
Keep Austin Stylish, a fashion site with a similar calendar for fashion events, and Dance Deets, a dance events site, both have lots of events that don't have any online presence at all, they're just flyers in boutique windows and club walls. Being able to have an online URL for events without canonical URLs is useful in these particular cases.
Showing more information is useful, as well. In my experience, the priority of information should be:
- "Where am I?"
- "What's going on today"
- "Is there an active community here"
- "What else should I be paying attention to"
- "Where are things this week/month"
- Plus being able to just add some things to my calendar without RSVPing
- RSVP to things properly (and add them to my calendar)
"STARTUP RI" and your newsletter call to action are not the same as saying "Hi, this is an uncurated aggregator for startup and tech events in Rhode Island."
Also, all of RI? Isn't that a whole state? Will you really drive across the entire state to go to an event? Geography is important, practical geography, like neighborhoods, areas people work and live, etc. South Austin, Central Austin, North Austin, East Austin are all different. You don't show enough context to know where things are. (I'm not saying a map with pins.) You also don't provide enough context on why I'd want to attend the event. "Writing Your Business Plan [in] Providence, RI" tells me nothing about what will be covered, who is hosting, why, etc. I have to click through all of these links and that's not really saving me any time or trouble. Same for your "Startups" and "Resources" links, ideally I'm going to become part of these meetups' communities. Giving me a list of the ones you track (and why) is useful.
You don't break up the dates enough. One of the few things I really like about Plancast is that it breaks up into "Today," "Tomorrow," the next few days this week, "Next week," later this month, next month, etc. The conditions under which someone can attend an event or not is very individual. You need to provide as much context as possible.
There's a list of v2 stuff, too, but that's a start.
[1]: Offline, here's an old IA link that has content: https://web.archive.org/web/20110807113142/http://www.dctech...
In regards to geography, most of the Rhode Island tech people I know work in Providence as it is the main city. Rhode Island, the home of the industrial revolution, is a great state, but it's so small that many of my old colleagues drove from other states (MA and CT).
However, I would love to break up the events by "topic" so would you be available for a quick Google Hangout?
Regards, Andrew
- @andrewcpkelley