[iRail] New Project : Firstsight.be

[Sacha Schmitz]

Hello there,

I've been in contact for a month now with Pieter for a project that I'm
currently developing. You can check it online (it's the beta-version, but
still, we have started to make some promotion for a week now) @
www.firstsight.be.

Me :
Sacha Schmitz, 23, Student at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and
Management in Business Engineering in 4th year. Not a perfect geek though,
but I really like writing some custom codes; I already have designed
websites for customers, mainly in Drupal.

My project :
Briefly, the website give the possibility to anyone to find back a person on
who you had a love at first sight, wherever : in the street, in public
transportation, in bar/clubs/restaurants/shops, libraries, etc. How ? The
two persons need to create an announcement (for free and anonymously) and
given the criterias they have entered, there's a sorting algorithm which
will analyze all the announcements in the database and only returns those
who have an enough percentage of matching. The algorithm is powerful but
flexible : powerful to only return announcements which matches, but flexible
in order to pass through user-stupidity (I've tried to reduce user input at
the maximum (only selection through a list)). For instance, if the meeting
took place in the street, there's a confidence interval of 500m. If the
meeting took place in a public transportation, there's a confidence interval
of two stops around the one selected, and so on !
That's for the first step ! I have other ideas, around this theme and for
instance, I'd like to install a router in every tram/bus/metro in order to
give people the possibility to chat with others which are in the same
transport, I'd like to give users the possibility to find people that they
secretly love in their class, in  their promotion, at their job, and so on.
I already have the support of one teacher at the ULB who would like to
create a collaboration with the university and maybe my faculty (Solvay),
but negotiations are in january/february.
Also, I'm preparing a negotiation with the Metro-newspaper to complete their
"Kiss&Ride" section.

How it works so far ?
It's been 2weeks that the website is online; one little week that we promote
it and we already had more than 1300 visits, 60 users and the first match
(today actually :-) ). The key of success for this project is that everybody
knows it; this is the reason why we have asked to a director and a cameraman
to film three promotion videos. The teaser of the first one is online (front
page of the website). Indeed, the two people who had a love at first sight
must know that this website exists, but also how it approximately works.

Why iRail ?
Because I needed the data from the STIB at first, since i'm focusing on
Brussels' youth for the first shot and I read Pieter's article in iRail's
blog. I took the chance to contact him and here I am :-)

What I'd need ?
Support of iRail community of course :-) I mean, if anyone is ready to work
on this project, s/he's the most welcome, and in any way : coding, theming,
project-leading, etc ! Also, I'd like to have it translated in English and
in Dutch from French (in English, I can do it on my own, even if correctors
are probably needed :-) ), but it has to be in an unformal-young way. If you
understand french (which I hope!), you'll certainly notice how it has been
written. I'd also like to have a promotion support; Pieter talked about a
press release, this would be awesome for instance ! If we can form a kind of
team around that project, we could have more weight in front of our
negotiators (STIB, Metro-newspaper, etc).


I don't know how it works after my presentation, but don't hesitate if you
have any question. You're free to contact me by mail, phone or skype :
sacha.schmitz :-)

Hope you'll enjoy it, I hope you'll spread the word, but mainly I hope
you'll be part of the team :-)

Cheers !

-- 
S. SCHMITZ
+32 473 50 71 46


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