2021 - Platform to discover, organise and host virtual events. Includes payments for recurring memberships and virtual venues. (Django, React, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, TailwindCSS, Next.js, Stripe)
At the start of the pandemic I was frustrated by meetup.com not converting time zones on search results. This made the discovery of international events, now made possible by COVID, not possible on Meetup.
To itch my own scratch I scraped meetup events and put them behind a discovery tool on a platform named NextHangout.com
SEO was boosted by people searching for specific events which they'd otherwise find on Meetup.
During this period the creator economy was peaking in interest amongst the tech world. I was intrigued with how small community owners could monetise their audiences. Yoga teachers could offer classes online, baking pages could run group cookouts online. They could monetise via live events. Ideally earning MRR for reliable income.
If I built community organising tools for these creators, this could be a route to monetising Next Hangout.
So I built out the communities features. This included community admins, one-off payments for events and tiered memberships via Stripe.
I was only one step away from building an all-in-one solution. All that was remaining was an integrated video conferencing tool.
Thus a platform standing on three pillars was born. Discover. Organise. Host.
I used Jitsi to provide the video conferencing infrastructure.
For the real time communication required for chats and control messages such as participants entering and leaving, I had to learn about websockets and integrate communicating via them into my Django backend.
