Notes from a company presentation (disclosure: I am an advisor) by Brian Dear on EVDB.
The problem
- the application: inconsistent ui, no synch hard to read, etx.
- What presentation would be right without this reference: the long tail
- little to no structured data, no search engine, no prospective searches
- All results in the "had I known" syndrome
The solution
- address the problems, naturally
Events of all kinds -- an event is anything that occurs or will occur. Not necessarily at a place, it is at a time. Not necessarily something in the newspaper, could be something important to you only. Webinars, podcasts, meetups.
The spectrum of events: Search, Find and Go
- logistics, planning
- promotion
- discovery
- registration, ticketing, fulfillment
Their focus is discovery. Everywhere.
The V in EVDB stands for Venues. Venue data is one of the biggest problems in publishing events. Rich venue, include lat and long. and enable people to annotate/tag.
Views help people discover events.
Data beyond scraping (inefficient), a hybrid smart crawl. Very inspired with Wikipedia, counter-intutive that it works.
Detail. Mere pointers are good enough vs. mere pointers are not good enough. We'll build the tools, but we'll let the community decide.
Distribution:
- web services api
- point of entry support: Point of entry (like point of sale or care): who is entering the data and how. Very few tools to let people publish.
- publishing support: plugin to publish to blog
- syndication: took a big drink of the blog kool-aid.
- open-source development
Demand: using perscriptive effects to generate demand.
Positioning: between events are the focus or feature. between web portal orientation and a web services orientation. EVDB is focused on events with an increasingly web services orientation.
Business model:
- Targeted advertising: local search, plus time, plus events
- Licensed API
Powered by apps (web, mobile)
- bounties from ticket/event registration partners
- Consumers can use for free
beta@evdb.com
System is personalized. Starts with a command line. Event items, with parents. Lets you tag events. Select from sessions during an event to compose a personalized calendar. Calendars have RSS and iCal feeds. Calendars can be publsihed as HTML. For things that haven't happened yet, SmartCalendars are persistent structured queries. Integrated with Meetup. Talks through entering an event.
You earn reputation based upon what people do with your events, not by creating events. Looking to have community moderation.
The promise is having your web services interop with others.
IMHO, Next year's Flickr and icon of obsession.
