Arbrey Tucker
Convergence Media
Final Project
"The Future of Congregating"
While there have been many websites and blogs designed with the intent on promoting public engagement, very few have been able to effectively capture the excitement of "the movement". For this project, I intend on doing just that, bridging the link between thrill seekers on vendors like never before. To do this I propose a website, based on the philosophy that there is always something exciting occurring--that may be of interest to someone not too far, and with proper dialog, the two sides can meet thus living happily ever after. Welcome to Nextwayv dot com, a spectacular movement recommendation system, created to simply and quickly connect the interest of those who are disconnected due to a lack of proper broadcasting.
This concept was first convinced in the year 2012, while I was out with a friend in NY, NY. possibly the busiest city in the world. And while there were may have been a million and one things to indulge in, we found it rather difficult to locate one. That's when it hit me. What if someone where create something using the internet that connected people of the same interest instantly. I mean really, that's what the internet were designed for, except instead of meeting online, they can meet instantly in person. (well not instantly due to a lack of teleportation technology). Of course this was just wishful thinking as I wasn’t exactly sure on how approach a project of this nature at that time..
Fast forward to the year 2014, and I have finally figured it out. Well, kinda forced to, as this was the answer to a semester project which asked of students to produce material that would live outside the classroom. Initially I thought; man this is going to be a breeze, being graded for something I was going to do anyway. Of course that was wishful thinking because in all reality, being a man of great reserves (lazy) I probably would have waited until somebody else brought this idea to life, and then sued them for something, I don't know. When I began to put this project together late October, it finally hit me. I really had no idea where to begin. This was not a social website as I did not intend for user to interact "online" and this was just not a listing website, as I really did not want users going through the pains taking task of trying to find one another. That's when I began my research on recommendation engines, and discovered an arm race was in commence to see who could construct the best engine. At first i thought, sign me up I am going to build "the one", the best recommendation engine out there. After a few days of trying to gain a ground understanding of how this"recommendation" engine worked I then realized; I might be greatly out resourced and this maybe another project all on it's own.
So, I brought out the virtual shovel and began to dig. After a few hours of digging I stumbled across a rare gem by the name of "Mortar", which was not only a recommendation system, but a free open source recommendation system. Having found this life savor meant I could rest easier at night, so I began to addressed the constructing of the website. This is when I began to loss sleep again, as websites are configured through a unworldly language the average human simply do not understand. Border-radius: 5px 5px 0px 0px;, color: #545454; background: url(banner-short-bg.png) no-repeat;?! What does it all mean!? This language is called html and its basic knowledge is required to successfully create a website,
as it is relatively difficult to come across templates which can adhere to
your every needs. Coloring schemes, positioning of a menu, scaling all important when designing a website to perfectly project your vision. Fortunate for me, I was able
to take a crash course on youtube.com, and within a matter of days I was able to
gain a quick understanding of html coding, allowing me to customize the website
to the best of my liking.
Once coding was out of the way, I now had to figure out the
content that was to be displayed on the website. This was no simple task as building
a website for the purpose of predicting what the public might do next, requires
public interaction beforehand. This was addressed through a relatively small and simple survey which hinted on the criteria most likely to dictate a
person’s social habits outside. A survey of ten people concluded the top
occurring themes in determining peoples willingness to go out and socialize were; age, demographic, income, and atmosphere. I was then
able to formulate my content around those choices, creating a web of
possibilities. I would give an exact figure on the number of possible outcomes, but it's been years since I've taken a math course and to spear myself from the high probability of of being incorrect; I am going to concluded that there were hundreds of algorithmic outcomes deriving from a small qualitative setup...
Next I had to figure out the language and
graphics to be placed throughout the website. I am a believer in “it’s not what you
present; it’s how you present it” and with that in mind, I attempted to phrase
each word and imagery in a way believed to be most engaging to potential users. formulating sentences such as; & may your next wayv be your best wyav; never a dull moment; welcome to the spectacle, are not abilities acquired through normal cognitive functions. Having to define what a "wayv" is in an appropriate fashion makes me (I believe) a mini successor to the great Webster.... Okay once the hosting party places their
information into
the logs, it is then relayed to Amazon Web Service or "AWS". Amazon Web Service is a inexpensive cloud service designed for large data input and is currently the provider of storage for big time data consuming companies like Netflix.
After the data have been successful stored in to AWS cloud, this is where "Mortar” makes the magic happen. Mortar
is a open source recommendation engine which works with AWS through Nextwayv to
provide searching users with the content they want. Data stored from the "Post”
feature on the website will be populated onto the Nextwayv's AWS cloud. There
it will wait for Mortar to access data when triggered by at "Find"
request via Nextwayv.com, drawing recommendations to a "Post", successfully
connecting the user to a particular event thus uniting the two. Okay now in English... Mortar
matches every "*necessary" field from searching party to the
"'*necessary" fields by the hosting party, effectively being pointing the users in the right direction.
Future options:
A hosting party with reoccurring events will be able to create profile making it easy to modify and broadcast their events. Once a connection has been made with the end -user, (if applicable) the searching party will have the option of purchasing a pass through the website making it convenient for them to enter the establishment. At the discretion of the host, a "live feed" feature will be made available, giving suspecting on goers insight into whether they should make that particular event a wayv or not.
A hosting party with reoccurring events will be able to create profile making it easy to modify and broadcast their events. Once a connection has been made with the end -user, (if applicable) the searching party will have the option of purchasing a pass through the website making it convenient for them to enter the establishment. At the discretion of the host, a "live feed" feature will be made available, giving suspecting on goers insight into whether they should make that particular event a wayv or not.
