CityX
From practice

What is on in town tonight? One calendar, with the poster, the time and the venue

The cinema posts on its own page, the library on another, the festival on social media. Whoever wants to know what is on tonight has to check five places. Or one.

Tomislav Krnic

Founder of the smart city project CityX · 3 min read

Friday afternoon, and a family wonders whether there is anything on in town at the weekend. The cinema has its programme on its own page, the library on another, a festival on social media, a concert on a poster by the bus stop. Whoever does not happen to follow all of them finds out on Monday.

What is on in town is no secret. It is simply scattered, and very little of it reaches the one place people look at many times a day: their phone.

Today first

The Events calendar service shows the next events on the home screen, today first: what, where and when. A citizen does not have to open anything to see that there is a film in the afternoon and a festival in the evening.

The next events on the home screen. The calendar with posters and a strip of the week. The day's events, each with its time and venue.
The next events on the home screen. The calendar with posters and a strip of the week. The day's events, each with its time and venue.
The next events on the home screen. The calendar with posters and a strip of the week. The day's events, each with its time and venue.
The next events on the home screen. The calendar with posters and a strip of the week. The day's events, each with its time and venue.

The calendar opens with the coming events that have a poster, followed by a strip of the week to jump to any day. Below it, the events are grouped by day, each with its time and place. An exhibition that opened last week and is still on appears under today, not under a day already gone.

Only what you are looking for

Not everyone wants everything. One tap on a category leaves only the cinema, only the concerts or only the exhibitions. Each category has its own colour, the same in the list and on the home screen, so after a while a citizen recognises it without reading.

Only the cinema. An event's page: the poster, the time, the venue, the organiser and a few lines about the event.
Only the cinema. An event's page: the poster, the time, the venue, the organiser and a few lines about the event.
Only the cinema. An event's page: the poster, the time, the venue, the organiser and a few lines about the event.

An event's page has what a poster has, and what a poster lacks: the date and time, the venue, who organises it and a few lines about it, here with a reminder of where to book cinema tickets. It can be shared with one tap, and a conversation about it can start in the app's community: who is going?

The city's own events stand in the same list as the cinema, the library and the festival. For a citizen there is no difference between an event the city organises and any other. There is only what is on, and whether they want to go.

What it takes

A person at the city who looks after what is on, and the decision to keep it in one calendar, with categories and posters, rather than in many places. The city chooses the categories that fit its life: cinema and concerts, lectures and workshops, sport, whatever its residents go to.

A city that keeps its events in several places starts by bringing them together. That step is worth taking anyway. Once it is done, what is on in town reaches the people who live there, not only those who already knew where to look.