Student Activity Network
Author: Jack Nichols
What NEED does this meet?
This is aimed primarily at university students, although has equal applicability to the wider student body.
There are plenty of events for students to get involved in to stimulate their interest in the wider world and community – model UNs, model EUs, moot courts, essay competitions, etc. However, it’s very hard to find out what’s going on, and how to get involved, to the extent that it’s often the same people time after time.
What is the APPROACH?
I have started developing a website along the lines of a database of student events (www.studentactivitynetwork.com) which has some advice on how to get involved and make the most of these events.
However, there are no websites that bring all these events together in one place. I believe that you’d get much more involvement from a wider range of people if these kinds of opportunities were made obvious in one central location.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
At the moment events are too narrowly targeted. Student event/competition/activity managers have limited resources to contact students. A central resource would make their work easier and students’ lives easier to find an event to develop their skills and interests or bring a new element to their lives.
What is the COMPETITION?
Similar sites – www.studentactivitynetwork.com. This is a website I am working on, but it does not have the key element yet – the database of events. This will add so much value that it would win out.
There are no other similar sites with a database that could be sorted by region/subject matter/type of event/date, so there is no immediate competition to win against.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
I envisage a mySQL/PHP database which would not take much to build. The advice pages could be made very simply and easily.
Additional elements could be added, although these would be slightly more costly: wikipedia-style advice pages so people could make their own changes; a message board, so that new people could get advice on what to do, and competitors could catch up with friends – networking possibilities for students.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the feedback. I agree, a large part of the challenge is ensuring there’s enough relevant publicity for these events (whether that comes from an aggregator like I’m suggesting, or merely the events themselves). That’s certainly something I’d thought of for my own website. I suppose there are three main options:
1. A dedicated webmaster to update the database (I’m hoping to do this with my own website), with the drawbacks of the time and energy this would take.
2. A ‘screenscraper’ for all the events, although this has the drawback of needing updating if events change their layouts, and still having to be updated for new events, leading you back to needing option 1.
3. Get big enough that events would come to you to register themselves. A long way, and quite a lot of hard work away.
I chose option 1 with the hope that it might eventually lead on to option 3. Whether this is true will remain to be seen. Since it’s something I believe in, I’m happy to give the database a go as soon as I have the knowledge of PHP and mySQL to implement it (or if it gets the backing following this search for ideas).
I also agree that the same people turn up because they’re interested, but if the events were made more apparent then you’d be more likely to get a range of interest.
I’d also planned to have a page on my website with details of how people might set up their own events. I’ve found it next to impossible to find this sort of information online, and might give people a chance to get involved be arranging an event around their own interests.
It strikes me that influencing event managers might be too much to ask, but the least I’d be able to do is open up current opportunities to more people, and give those people a chance to set up something they’d like.
More comments gratefully received, but thanks again for the feedback!
Jack
Hey
This is an interesting idea – and a well identified need – although from experience, I think one of the key problems is not around having the technology present to promote events – so much as making sure people use it…
Most organisations, societies and groups run their own websites etc – but because committees change year after year – are very bad at keeping centralised databases of information up-to-date…
Perhaps one thing to look at is how the information that is already out there can be agregated – without needing people to enter their own information into a central database… most societies have mailing lists / their own websites etc… but how can the information that circulates on those be pulled together in a central location if that is what is needed…
It is worth also asking what else is it that means the same few always get involved in everything… I’m not sure it is all down to people not having enough information about what events are on – perhaps there is a need to look more info what sort of information they want about getting involved – and to provide resources for groups to think more critically about how they run events and activities that maximise their accessibility…