January 2024—I’m living in Amsterdam for 4 years now. And despite what I thought at first, there’s so much going on every single day. Culture events, talks, tech meetups, exhibitions, etc.
Yet most people remain stuck in their social bubble, rarely meeting completely new people. It’s hard to know where to start outside of that. And even if you do, you cannot keep track of all the different places where events get announced.
The core idea: point people to local communities where things are happening.
With the Events In Amsterdam app, you just select the topics that you’re interested in, and it shows you everything that’s happening related to those.
In the background it scrapes Meetup, EventBrite, and dozens of other local websites.
Often, going somewhere depends on if your friends are going as well. Or you might want to talk to someone again.
So the app also has a social component. Everyone has a personal link, and with that link other people can see the events you’re going to next. Here is mine.
January 2025—I continue to use the project and fix the scraper when it breaks. Sometimes people install it from the App Store, but it doesn’t take off much otherwise.
April 2025—I built a similar version for activist protests, Amsterdam Protests.
It’s not an app, but an Instagram channel and physical flyer (very Lindy). Uses the same scraping infrastructure.
Many people I meet reply on it to know what’s going on. And it’s been very helpful for networking and learning what works on Instagram.
I want to turn it into more of a community / independent platform in the future.
