The following is an email to the CaughtUp Team suggesting a feature on how to get events on CaughtUp. Previously, we were considering using an API from an event company to get events on the app that users can discover. But, in this email I shared where events I care about come from and how they are shared.
Subject: Getting Events onto CaughtUp Feature Proposal
To: marketing@caughtup.app
Hello Team,
What are your thoughts on the direction to implement this instead of adding an Events API to get events? I think we could also join AI Hype 😁.
Scheduling, Discovering, Sharing. On the subject of making it easier to discover events, I think we should get events from people. I don't think we should use an API to get events from event platforms such as EventBrite. It may be bloatware.
We want it to be easy for people to find events. Events that are relevant.
WHY?
I was thinking about what kind of hangout people go to and how they find them. Event Brite and other event management platforms only have big events that are paid. People find events from flyers they see while walking or visiting a store or gym, or they see it on Instagram.
Sure they may find an event URL online. But most events and hangouts people go to are not on any one platform. The number of events I go to with Event Brite in a month? 0. It's maybe once a year.
The number of times I see a flyer or hear about an event on Instagram, or an email? Plenty more. It could be a picture, a description, etc.
In college what kind of meetup events are around? They aren't on EventBrite. They're in emails, flyers, Instagram.
FEATURE PROPOSAL
I propose we make it easier to translate those events into CaughtUp.
With advancements in AI OMG we can do this and it can be very accurate.
The formula is simple:
Given a photo —> extract all text via AI (easy)
Event text —> make it into an event. Using the new AI models.
With the created event in the app, we can add more value by just prompt the user to invite people easily & manage who's going and the follow up chats and all things required for an event.
If the user makes the event public, then we could add that to the event discovery feed we wanted to make.
PROTOTYPE
We've already made a prototype in the past. This was done over a weekend. So, we should be able to get this working fairly quickly.
Image of flyer --> text --> event details parsed --> Google calendar event was what this project did.