About Us

Outvizor helps you create and host better in-person experiences.

Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health.
- Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

Why Outvizor?

Modern society is increasingly lonely. In fact, loneliness has been declared an epidemic. And the impact of social isolation is real — a recent study showed it can increase your odds of premature mortality more than smoking 15 cigarettes a day can.

The physical world is having a tough time competing with the digital world. Consumer technology has gotten exponentially better in the past 20 years, which has fueled more and better content, games, ‘social’ apps, gambling, and so on.

This ends up being a cycle, since the more digital content we consume, the more time and capital goes towards it, and so it gets even better, and we consume even more.

And the cycle repeats, until we are consumed by our own personalized digital worlds. Pretty soon, going out seems like an absurd notion — why risk your precious time and money on an outing or event, when you’re guaranteed a good night at home?

That event you’re thinking of going to may or may not be worth your time, it’s tough to tell. That new episode on your recommendation list is a 97% guarantee to be worth watching.

The problem with social events

Last year, I moved to a new city. I didn’t really know anyone, and so I would occasionally attend events that my building hosted or that I would find on MeetUp.

While I enjoyed attending these events, I couldn’t help to think to myself how they could be better.

For example, often times there isn’t a clear itinerary provided before the event, so you’re not sure what to expect.

During the event, there may be times where you’re not sure what to do and there isn’t any clear direction provided by the hosts. If there’s no questions, intros, or prompts provided, people often get asked the same questions (where do you live, what do you do, etc…).

After the event, there may not be an easy way to share your feedback, so the creator of the event won’t know what worked and what didn’t.

Events should provide enough information for you to decide if it’s worth your time. There also needs to be the right amount of structure and guidance from hosts, ensuring that guests don’t experience too much down time. Finally, event creators need feedback on their events so they can keep improving them.

While other event websites help you do some of the things mentioned above, I didn’t see anything that was really empowering event creators to connect their guests, build experiences, and grow their audience. So I started on Outvizor.

Outvizor Features

Polls

Finding a date and time that work for people that don’t belong to the same institution can be a tough challenge.

So Outvizor provides you an easy way to poll guests for a time and for a location. You can also create polls with more general questions.

Itinerary

Another issue before attending an event is deciding whether or not if will be worth it. If you’re not sure, and there isn’t any itinerary provided, odds are you just won’t go. After all, why spend time and possibly money if you aren’t sure what you’re going to get? This isn’t 1995.

Which is why creating an itinerary on Outvizor is made to be really simple, and the itinerary is displayed prominently on the event page.

In version 2, reviews (for the event, the creator, and possibly the venue) will also be displayed on the event page, as we’ve gotten so used to reading reviews before doing anything these days (maybe too much time, further reading on that here).

Tracks

An itinerary lets people know what to expect. But what if you could actually schedule things to happen during your event?

Maybe you want to simply display messages to the host, or you want to send out a message to your current attendees.

Perhaps you’d like to take it a step further, and break everyone up into groups with a prompt to discuss. Or you’d like to poll everyone on their thoughts of the event so far.

Tracks allow you to do just that.

Tracks make your event feel more like an experience, providing your guests just the right amount of context to get into a flow state and enjoy themselves, while making it easier for hosts to guide everyone along.

Roles

As a host, you may be bringing different groups of people together. Maybe you’re hosting a language exchange, and you’re trying to balance the number of beginners and native speakers. Or you’re a matchmaker, pairing up men and women.

Outvizor lets you create separate roles, and you can let guests choose a role or you can assign them a role yourself.

This way, you can create different experiences for your guests based on their role (by sending role-specific messages, polls, forms, etc…).

If you’re breaking people up into groups, you can even ensure a balanced ratio of roles (e.g. 1 native speaker and 2 beginners to each group).

Live Event App

Once your event is live, you’ll have a dedicated live event page, which functions like its own app. All confirmed guests will get an email with a link to the live event page once you click ‘Go Live’.

If you created a Track for your event, your hosts will see a navigation bar at the bottom of their screen, with the current track item and the ability to go forward/backward between track items. Hosts also have the ability to send out blasts by tapping on the Menu button.

On the live page, you have an event feed, which shows actions relevant to the live event (like check-ins and actions performed by the hosts).

There is also a message board, which anyone who has checked in to the event can post to, making it easier for everyone at the event to communicate (no need for a separate group chat).

Most importantly, your event participants can receive notifications about the live event on their phone, without needing to download another app.

For example, whenever a host sends out a blast (which at the moment can be a message, a poll, a form, or splitting people up into groups), relevant participants will receive a notification.

Splitting people up into groups from the live event page.

Finally, there is a QR code tab, so that in case someone is at the event and wants to easily join in, any guest can click that tab and show it to the new guest.

Core Event Management

I’ve just described features that make Outvizor a little different than other event platforms.

But Outvizor also handles the core tasks of hosting events, including:

Event Invitations — Drag and drop your Excel file to bulk invite guests. Or simply type emails. You can also let invited guests bypass registration if you wish.

Tickets & Payments — Create multiple ticket types, offer early bird specials and promo codes. Your guests will receive a PDF of their ticket, with a QR code which you can scan to easily check them in and redeem the ticket. Alternatively, you can offer a pay later option with instructions on how to make payment.

Recurring Events — Set your event to recurring, and guests can subscribe to be notified when it repeats. Your weekly event will be automatically created 2 days before it’s supposed to occur. Only weekly recurring events are supported at the moment.

Forms and Registration Questions — Get the information you need from your guests to deliver a quality experience. On Outvizor, you also have the option of making guest responses viewable or not from other guests. If you’re hosting a potluck and you’re asking what food everyone is bringing, for example, you may want to keep the responses viewable so no one makes the same dish.

Subscribers — People can subscribe to your account to get notified when you launch a new event. You also have the option of keeping your account private, in which case you’ll need to approve any subscription requests.

And more... — Setting an event capacity, waitlists, requiring guest approval, controlling who can view the guest list, etc.

What’s Next?

Version 2 of Outvizor will include curated events.

Current event platforms have become too crowded, there are too many types of events to filter through, and it’s usually unclear if they are worth attending.

So on Outvizor, each event will aim to have 5 different scores: for solo people, couples, families, and friend groups.

We’ll use human curation and AI assistance to curate a maximum of 20 events per week in a given city, starting with Chicago.

The other two main features that are to come on Outvizor are AI host assistants and Clubs.

AI Hosts can perform all the tasks that a host could on Outvizor. You’ll be able to provide a prompt to the AI, and it will create your event, design a track, and perform other tasks that a host normally would, like making intros and coming up with prompts and icebreakers.

Clubs — Let’s say you’re creating events as part of a group or social club. The problem is that as you grow your members, it becomes harder to maintain the essence of your club — having deeper connections and conversations is tougher with more people. It also becomes challenging logistically — finding venues that can accommodate you, coordinating an agreeable time, etc.

So with Clubs on Outvizor, you’ll be able to easily match members into smaller groups together and craft events and get-togethers for them. This way, you can grow your club without losing the level of intimacy and connection you’re aiming for.

Conclusion

In-person experiences need all the help they can get so we no longer live in a world where staying in and swiping, streaming, gambling, or gaming at home is the only rational choice.

Outvizor’s first version is built on the premise that people are lonely these days because of a rational choice to stay in versus going out/to a social event, and therefore improving the tools to design and host events (empowering event creators) is crucial.

But tough problems require robust solutions, and there are other factors that make loneliness difficult to overcome these days.

Discovering quality, worthwhile events is still hard to do, and meeting new people outside of work or school is even more challenging. So version 2 of Outvizor will curate quality events, and also help you meet new people in smaller groups (through the Clubs feature).

Outvizor is currently in beta, you can try it out for your next event. It’s currently free for the first 50 users; after that, there will be the option to pay a monthly fee or a percentage of ticket sales.

If you have any questions or features you’d like to see, leave a comment or send an email to kenny@outvizor.com.

Thank you for reading!

- Kenny Kandola