3 posts tagged “chicago”
A couple of years ago, I managed to get tickets to the Timeline Theatre Company's production of "Copenhagen". This seemed to be an interesting play and I was looking forward to seeing it.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. For some reason or other, I didn't make it out to the theatre and the two tickets that I purchased expired on my kitchen table that night. I was disappointed that I couldn't make the play, but I was also disappointed that the tickets went unused.
Well, all of that changes soon. For the past few weeks, I've been working with a small team of undergraduates on a site we're calling Chicago Stubs. Think of it as a local Craigslist devoted exclusively to tickets to events. Using Chicago Stubs, you can search for specific tickets, browse for tickets by time or place, and list your own unused tickets.
The fundamental difference between this site and other online ticket sites is that it is designed for both browsing and searching. Why does this matter? Picture this scenario:
It's Wednesday evening, and I still haven't figured out a good weekend outing for my mentee and myself. I know that we're both free on Saturday and Sunday and that I don't want to do something we've done before. I visit Chicago Stubs and browse the tickets for events on Saturday and Sunday. Most of the listings are for single tickets, but I find a pair of tickets being offered for a special event at the Field Museum that has been sold out for weeks. I see that the person offering the tickets is in my neighborhood, and I accept his offer. Accompanying my acceptance is a brief personal message suggesting that we make the swap at a local tea house.
A couple of hours, I get an e-mail informing me that he'd like to complete the offer and to meet him at the tea house to pick up the tickets after work. I go to the tea house and get the tickets. Saturday rolls around and my mentee and I visit the museum. We have a great time. When I get home, I log into the site and post positive feedback about the offering user. He gains reputation within the community and becomes someone who I might give priority to, should our roles be reversed in the future.
This is one potential scenario, and there are many more that I'm sure you could imagine (the season ticket holder trading unused Cubs tickets for musical performances, the local office swapping tickets among themselves, fledgling theatre companies listing unused tickets to fill the house, etc.). On a macro level, this site aims to reduce the amount of "ticket waste" in the local area. And I'm planning on using the technical resources at my disposal (including the web, e-mail, RSS, and text messaging) to solve this problem.
At the moment, the site is still being developed for a course in online communities I'm currently taking. However, I think that this idea has legs and I hope to get an actual functioning service up and running early this summer.
So, where do you come in? For this site to work, we need actual users posting actual tickets that other actual users can search and browse. We need a critical mass of users for this to take off. No users = no site.
At the moment, I'm putting the finishing touches on the alpha version of the site. I'll be ready for users/testers later in this week. So, if you're interested in helping us make this site as useful as possible, head on over to Chicago-Stubs.com and add yourself to the invitation list. I'll be sending out a limited number of invites for the alpha, and once we fix the inevitable
bugs and are ready for more users, we'll open up the site and invite the rest of you.
Some local flavor:
Over the past few years, I've created a working ritual where I would go to Panera on Clark and Diversey to get stuff done. I would enter the restaurant and order a French onion soup in a sourdough bread bowl with a medium drink. I'd get my meal and then sit down somewhere situated near a power outlet and get to work. I'd use my laptop to sign on to the free wireless network and go from there.
After today (and several recent trips), I think that I'm ready to put this ritual to rest and construct a new one to replace it. Here are the problems that have prompted me to reconsider Panera:
1. More often than not, the free Wi-Fi is extremely spotty. I can't seem to get it working half the time and it's totally unreliable. The reliability has gone steadily downhill since I started visiting the restaurant a couple of years ago.
2. The place is much more crowded than before. It's often difficult to find a good place to sit, power outlet or no. I've begun to arrive early so that I can get choice seats, but it becomes necessary to do this earlier and earlier.
3. I don't know if I'm tired of their food or whether there's a real slip in quality, but I'm not enjoying the food there as much as I used to. The French onion soup seems oversalted and I can't ever get a fruit cup that isn't completely messy and stick o the outside.
I don't fault the place for the first or second complaint. I believe that these problems are simply a symptom of the place's success. The more people you get on WiFi, the spottier it becomes. The restaurant is not composed of infinite floor space, so it will become more crowded as more people visit. Until the last few months, it was a very nice place to be, so that's understandable. As for the food, I'm not the pickiest person in the world and I'd completely overlook my complaints about the food if I didn't have problems finding good places to sit or logging onto a reliable wireless connection. However, it's not good enough to keep me there.
So, what's the alternative?
I think that my plan will be to walk around and scout out coffee shops and Panera-like locations to see if there are any that I like with my laptop. I will constrain my search to my immediate neighborhood to begin with and expand from there if needed.
If by any chance I have any Chicago readers that have suggestions, please let me know.
