A bit of context, a portuguese investments bank (BPI) organised a hackday, a challenge to build a mobile app in 24 hours or less, called Appy Day BPI. (Fullsix Portugal was involved in organising the project but I didn’t have any contact with the team.)
What followed was an amazing trip of project planning, building a proposal for the event that was later accepted. It was just the beginning.
Our team, The Radioheads, had three elements: me, Diana Costa and Paulo Gonçalves. Diana is an amazing designer and Paulo proved to be a tireless and good humoured programmer. I am not kidding, he went as far as insulting pieces of code and cursing at the laptop, making us laugh until our stomachs hurt.
How Stubs was born
Mobile apps are a dime a dozen and we were faced with the decision of following the categories proposed by the Appy Day team or go with our gut and build something we loved.
We decided to build something we love.
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Stubs is an app that brings live music and the web together. It lists upcoming and past concerts and lets you browse the instagram and twitter photos that were taken at that time and place. It can also pull videos and other media, of course. But it goes far beyond this.
We wanted it to be truly useful to everyone who loves music. So we added the possibility to know what concerts your friends are going and to signal to your friends which concerts you plan to attend. There is also the possibility to buy tickets and discover new bands playing near your location.
A lot of our work around Stubs was thinking up a business model and strategy to make it truly stand out. Diana was of course in charge of building the Design, while Paulo handled the programming. My part was to come up with the concept and name around the app, something that only now is seeing the light of day, everything else was to apply for the event and as part of the jury materials we had to deliver at the start.
Defining Victory
Since the beginning we had a clear goal, to make the most of the Appy Day, to build something we loved and to finish the 24 straight hours of code, caffeine and fun with an amazing story to tell.
During that time we did so much more than just code. We shot a timelapse video, had the good fortune of getting a sketch of Stubs to share with everyone, came up with a million inside jokes, made new friends and spent time with a few old ones.
Others were not as thrilled. Not everyone was happy with the decision of the jury and wrote articles showing their discontent. It makes sense for people to share their opinion when they feel treated unfairly. Personally, I don’t feel it is a constructive use of their time and energy. Like Diana said, instead of ranting on Facebook developers should look for people to invest in their project.
And that is just what we are going to do.
Our app works but it’s at a prototype stage. Bugs need to be fixed, new areas need to be created and it needs a proper home on the web. From time to time, this blog is going to drift away from talking about technology and communication to tell you how this project is going.
Back to you, what is on your mind?
