Mitman

Organize meetup
Fillin event details
Submit event details
Get a parametric code for attendees
Welcome screen

Inspiration

Managing attendance, SWAG distribution and feedback collection at our Developer Circles Accra meetups has been a pain. We ideated bots as a solution but weren't so sure until we saw the Platform Meetup Nairobi Bot in Kenya. Then we thought, let's make this global and open to anyone.

What it does

Mitman collects details about a future meetup event from the organizer and spins a Messenger code which attendees can scan on the day of event to register attendance, submit feedback and reserve SWAG (if available). After the event, the organizer can also generate a report about the event which will include useful statistics like attendance, feedback and other data. We wish to provide analytics for recurring events in the future.

How we built it

Mitman is a full stack JavaScript aplication with both the Messenger botend and server backend running on NodeJS.

Challenges we ran into

Sending user data like PSIDs from Webview back to the bot on submission was difficult. The extensions SDK documentation didn't provide enough information to help us accomplish that.

Working together as a team was also difficult since we were geographically separated.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to overcome some of the challenges with clever hacks like passing userIDs around in url parameters.

What we learned

Most of the challenges you will encounter while building out a tech project cannot be forseen. You need to start building early to meet them and then tackle them early enough.

What's next for Mitman

Analytics for recurring meetups.
Integration with event marketing platforms like Splashthat, Eventbrite, and Egotickets etc so events can be automatically created by the bot on behalf of the meetup organizer.