Ekology: A new way to experience San Diego
It was a Saturday evening when Tyler Long was scrolling through his Facebook feed, and it happened. He realized he had missed the OB Street Fair and Chili Cook-Off. The disappointment of missing one of his favorite San Diego festivals gave him an idea: San Diegans need a better way to stay up-to-date with all of the incredible events that happen here.
“It’s really difficult to stay in-the-know,” said Long, 27. “Information about events is scattered across so many different websites, and you can never be sure if you’ve seen everything that pertains to your interests.”
Enter his solution: Ekology, a mobile app that eases the process of event discovery for San Diegans and those visiting San Diego.
“All a user has to do is download the app and select a few things they’re personally interested in. Then they’re presented with a feed of events specifically tailored to those interests,” Long said.
When you see something you’re interested in, tap the ‘like’ button. The event will then sync to the calendar on your phone and be added to a personal list of events you’ve ‘liked’ within the app. If anything changes about the event, Ekology will notify you of the changes.
Ekology pulls information from multiple sources, including Facebook, Eventbrite, neighborhood websites, sandiego.org and, most importantly for us, the special events calendar the City of San Diego publishes.
When an organization or event host applies for a Special Event Permit from the City, information from that application gets entered into a special events database. A permit is required for any event that incorporates City property, including sidewalks, streets, right-of-way, parks and other public properties. The City used to publish this calendar only as a set of PDFs on its website, sandiego.gov.
But the recent launch of an Open Data Portal will save Long and his team hours they have been spending each week working with the PDFs. The portal offers machine-readable datasets that are openly licensed, and one of those datasets is Special Events.
An app like this is an example of how Open Data can help the City’s economy. Developers can use government data to build apps. And in Ekology’s case, local merchants win because more people will attend events.
“By having event information in one place, we think that we can help event organizers drive attendance while Ekology grows its user-base in San Diego,” said Long. “But our top priority is to help residents and visitors feel engaged in the local community and have memorable, fun experiences.”
A California State University San Marcos graduate, Long made a career change in February when he left his job at Solar Turbines to work full-time on Ekology. His background is in analytics, so he focuses on the data science and content-gathering aspects of the app. He uses data-mining tools that are able to comb through websites and identify events that will ultimately be posted on Ekology.
The next logical step for the app is to add more cities. According to Long, San Francisco is next on the list.
“We strive to be the go-to technology for social event discovery in every major U.S. city,” Long said. “Just give us a few years to work that out.”
