As a startup, Bside-Me needed to build up its brand and also generate new revenue streams. Bside-Me partnered with German event and talent management company GO GmbH with the idea of better connecting to Karneval patrons for the festivities in Cologne, Germany. GO brought the talent and Bside-Me brought the technical and design know-how.
It was quite challenging with the language because this was a 100% German app with even Kölsch slang that goes along with Karneval. Even with my B1 level German, I was able to collaborate and work efficiently with the senior leadership and managers at GO GmbH to begin the design and development process.
Since Bside-Me was already developing mobile apps for celebrities, I needed to determine which functionality and features we could keep and what would need to be developed. Features such as events, calendars, participating Karneval artist pages and even song lyrics were agreed to be added. We also agreed to only develop mobile apps and no web applications - developed for iPhone 4 & 5 and Android.
Countless meetings, calls and revisions were done over a 6-week period. We made incredible progress. The deadlines were tight because the date of Karneval is not flexible - you either make it or you wasted 3 months of your time.
Almost 20,000 people downloaded the Karnevals-App between the App Store and Google Play stores. Unfortunately, this was only done for the 2015 Karneval since Bside-Me disbanded a few months afterward.
