Chicago Free Events

About the Project

As a passionate advocate for exploring my city's vibrant culture, I embarked on a journey to create a platform that celebrates the wealth of free events in Chicago. Inspired by my own love for attending events without breaking the bank (I attend pretty much all campus events for free food :P), I envisioned a solution that would empower others to do the same.

Inspiration

The bustling energy of Chicago's streets, coupled with the countless opportunities for cultural immersion, sparked the initial idea for this project. I realized that while the city hosts an abundance of events, many people were unaware of them due to lack of centralized information. This realization ignited my passion to bridge the gap and provide a platform that connects event organizers with eager attendees.

What it Does

Chicago Free Events is a comprehensive platform that aggregates information about free events happening across the city. Leveraging web scraping techniques and AI categorization algorithms, the platform categorizes events into various genres, making it easier for users to discover events tailored to their interests. With an intuitive user interface, users can browse, and filter events seamlessly, all in one place.

How I Built It

I employed a combination of Python libraries for web scraping and AI categorization, alongside front-end frameworks for building an intuitive user interface. By meticulously curating event data from various sources and implementing robust categorization algorithms, we ensured that users could easily discover events tailored to their interests.

Challenges We Ran Into

One of the main challenges we encountered was the dynamic nature of event data on the web. Scraping data and developing algorithms that could accurately categorize events amidst constantly changing content required innovative problem-solving and continuous refinement. Additionally, optimizing the user interface for seamless navigation posed its own set of challenges, which we tackled through iterative design and user feedback.

Accomplishments That I am Proud Of

I am proud to have created a platform that not only celebrates the richness of Chicago's cultural landscape but also makes it accessible to all providing a user-friendly experience and accurate event categorization has resulted in a valuable resource for both event organizers and attendees, and I was a LOT of FUN.

What We Learned

Throughout the development process, I gained invaluable insights into web scraping techniques, AI LLM's and user interface design principles. I deepened our understanding of how technology can be harnessed to enhance the urban experience and facilitate community engagement. In particular, I learned the intricacies of web scraping and how to efficiently gather and process data from diverse sources.

What's Next for Chicago Free Events

Looking ahead, we envision further enhancements to the platform, including additional sources for scraping of the data, including of hackathons and more rather than just social events, integration of personalized recommendations, social features for sharing events, and partnerships with local businesses and organizations. I am committed to continually evolving Chicago Free Events to better serve the needs of our users and further enrich the cultural fabric of our city.

Context: Leveraging data from top-rated event websites like Do312, recommended by Chicagoans on Reddit.

Built With

• beautiful-soup
• huggingface
• mistral-7b-instruct
• ollama
• python
• streamlit