Events are an experience. Imagine yourself going enjoying a good comedy show, networking at an important conference, or eating at an awesome banquet. What if you or your guests couldn't do one or more of these things?
(Psst! If you liked this shirt, there's more! Scroll to the bottom of this post for the deets...)
Imagine being deaf and not having a sign language interpreter to translate all those good jokes.
Imagine the indignity of being carried into the conference room because there was no proper wheelchair ramp.
Imagine watching your friends eat all that awesome food, and not being able to have any because you're allergic to most of it.
Would the event be worth it?
Hell no.
You would think that in these modern times we'd have solved all of these access issues by now. And we have, in many areas. Most venues are wheelchair accessible. Television shows are closed captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing. And one can always go with a plain salad instead of those fries. Right?
There are a diverse number of access needs, and many barriers towards getting them for both the event host and attendee.
It's estimated that nearly 1 out of 5 Americans have a disability. Not to mention 30% of adults and 40% of children are affected by some kind of allergy.
Can you imagine how all of these people are seriously missing out on all kinds of events from London to Los Angeles? And it's not just them...
Event hosts and promoters - they're also missing out! These barriers are preventing them from reaching and marketing to this huge under-served audience. It doesn't even occur to most of them that this marketing segment exists! This is where education is key.
I'm glad you asked! But even if you didn't, I want you to know that my wife and I are seasoned web developers who have built an international event promotions web app, Eventida, that aims to educate and assist everyone to overcome these barriers and solve these problems in commercially viable ways.
One cool way we do this are through our quick and easy accommodation request forms. Find an event you like? Login and click the Get Access button to fire the host a pre-filled and/or custom request. As a bonus, and for added chance of success, you can copy up to 25 other email addresses on the request, including accommodation service providers.
That's 25 potential guests or other leads for the host or promoter. Making events accessible can be a win-win situation if done right.
Check it out or take the Eventida tour to check out the other features.
Oddly enough, it's mostly free! There is no cost to use Eventida to promote your events, if you or someone you know host any worth mentioning. No cost to find events, create lists, or request access. It's completely functional, if not totally bug free, so do have a go at it. https://eventida.com gets you there.
And do point these bugs out so we can fix them! As I mentioned, it's just my wife and I, so all the support we can get in accomplishing our goals would be much appreciated. There's cool t-shirts in it too!
In fact, you can even submit someone else's event and have them claim and update it!
You can create lists of events and invite others to follow, and even add events to these lists.
And of course there's advertising. If you want to pay us to advertise your event related goods or services on Eventida, you're very much welcome to do so.
These t-shirts are part of our fundraiser. We've dedicated ourselves to doing Eventida full time, and have shut down the client consulting side of our business in order to do so.
Crazy? We think so too. But we believe in Eventida! If you think these t-shirts are cool and/or you think what we're doing to help improve access to events to over 35% of the population is worthwhile, come join the others who also support us! You'll get to pick one or more of these t-shirts in various sizes for your support, and be mentioned in the supporters' word cloud on the back!
Note that we tried to do a contest, but that didn't work out so we came up with our own ideas. Feel free to suggest other ideas and maybe we'll add them to the choices.
We made a couple videos about it, followed by a story of an incident that helped spur Eventida's mission forward. Enjoy.
