[iRail] New Project : Firstsight.be

Mon Dec 5 22:42:54 UTC 2011

I really love the project and it's something really cool.
Awesome you had your first match today. :) 

Really eager to see what happens if it goes viral. 

I'd really suggest you to translate it in Dutch (and English) before going all out on press and promotion though. 

But please do keep me/us in the loop with the progress of this. 

@iRail: also great example for a not-so-common use case we can show to dataset owners 

--
Kind regards,
Yeri Tiete
yeri at tiete.be
www.yeri.be
+32 (0)474/61.01.39

On 05 Dec 2011, at 23:35, Sacha Schmitz wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> iRail mailing list
> iRail at list.irail.be
> http://lists.rootspirit.com/mailman/listinfo/irail

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