Reading time: 5 minutes
The Bunte Republik Neustadt is one of the most important festivals in Dresden. In the alternative scene district, over 150,000 visitors celebrate for three days. There is a lot of art and culture, bands, DJs and performances.
The event is self-organized and does not follow any specific program. There are many small groups who have their own agenda.
With this amount of information you can quickly lose track. An app definitely offers a solution to this. To get everything together in one place, Christian and Karl from the online portal Neustadt-Leben collected all the information about the festival and created an event app within one week. Here you will learn how to handle hundreds of program points at the same time and how they used, among other things, the survey function for social purposes.
LineUpr: Hello you two. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Please introduce yourself and explain what the Neustadt-Leben project is.
Christian and Karl: Hi, we are Christian Hille and Karl Adler. Christian is a lawyer and Karl is a computer scientist. We had the idea for the project Neustadt-Leben.de over 10 years ago, when there were not so many offers online for the Dresdener-Neustadt. We started to build a small community. Here users talked about the pubs in the Neustadt, arranged to meet for movie nights or sometimes for a barbecue in the Alaunpark.
LineUpr: What role do events play for you?
Christian and Karl: Later we specialized in summing up the events in the Neustadt so that we could give the sociable Neustadt resident a compact overview of the potential evening program.
This resulted in the desire to provide a good overview of the very extensive and varied program of the BRN. Unfortunately in the last few years nothing was done about this because of the lack of time, but this year we have finally managed to collect the bulk of the program points on time.
LineUpr: You used an event app from LineUpr for the Bunte Republik Neustadt (BRN). Please tell us more about this festival.
Christian and Karl: The BRN is actually not a classic event or even a district party, as some call it, but it actually stems from a half-joking idea from the 90s which proclaims the Dresden Neustadt as an independent micronation. On this occasion, the Bunte Republik has always been celebrated. Although much of the original character of the festival has suffered under the urban constraints, there is still the special aspect that there is neither an organizer nor a tightly planned program. Many residents contribute very individually and sometimes very spontaneously to the Bunte Republik.
LineUpr: What information did you use in the location profiles?
Christian and Karl: Actually only the location itself. Unfortunately, we lacked a bit of information from the individual organizers.
LineUpr: How do you rate the creation of the event app with LineUpr? What do you like and what can we improve?
Christian and Karl: Actually, it was really awesome, how quickly you can create such an event app from scratch. With the Excel-Import, it would be nice, if you don’t have to reconfigure all the column assignments etc., if an error occurs during the import. Unfortunately we had this quite often.
We actually customized everything, once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy and it gives the app the finishing touch.
LineUpr: Did you also use the survey features?
Christian and Karl: Yes, in parallel with the event app, we gave out postcards with typical Neustadt motifs in exchange for a donation. The proceeds of the donation were to be donated to a Club in the Neustadt, but we wanted our users to participate in the decision. That’s why we created a survey asking who should receive the donation. Of the five clubs to choose from, there was an exciting head-to-head race between the City Gardens Association and the Treberhilfe, which won in the end.
LineUpr: What information did you use in the location profiles?
Christian and Karl: Actually only the location itself. Unfortunately, we lacked a bit of information from the individual organizers.
LineUpr: How do you rate the creation of the event app with LineUpr? What do you like and what can we improve?
Christian and Karl: Actually, it was really awesome, how quickly you can create such an event app from scratch. With the Excel-Import, it would be nice, if you don’t have to reconfigure all the column assignments etc., if an error occurs during the import. Unfortunately we had this quite often.
We actually customized everything, once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy and it gives the app the finishing touch.
LineUpr: Did you also use the survey features?
Christian and Karl: Yes, in parallel with the event app, we gave out postcards with typical Neustadt motifs in exchange for a donation. The proceeds of the donation were to be donated to a Club in the Neustadt, but we wanted our users to participate in the decision. That’s why we created a survey asking who should receive the donation. Of the five clubs to choose from, there was an exciting head-to-head race between the City Gardens Association and the Treberhilfe, which won in the end.
LineUpr: How did your visitors react to the app?
Christian and Karl: Unfortunately, very little, but the little feedback we got was consistently positive. Due to the many scattered program points, some visitors would have liked a map where you can see what is currently taking place live.
LineUpr: The event is now over. Would you use the app the same way at the next event to communicate with the participants, or is there something that you would change?
Christian and Karl: Definitely yes. However, we would start much earlier and give even more information about the locations and the general event.
LineUpr: Which top three tips would you like to give other organizers for the use of LineUpr?
Christian and Karl:
– Point out the feedback feature
– Use the polls
– Create an attractive domain forwarding for the app
LineUpr: Thank you both for the interesting interview.
So you are prepared for the next BRN. The foundation is there and now only the building blocks need to be laid.
The use of the export and import function naturally makes a lot of sense with so many points.
Now all you have to do is look at how the app can be publicized but you will certainly find a solution to that as well.
Until then!
You can find more information and current news about the Neustadt on Twitter and Facebook of course, the boys are also on Instagram and a look at their website is always worthwhile.
