WITH more than 180 bands playing across 25 venues, Barnsley music lovers who head into the town centre today will be met with a feast of live music.
But with so much on the table, getting overwhelmed or forgetting about an act marked down as a must-see can be easy.
Enter Simon Robinson and his company One Min Manager.
For the last two years Simon has worked with businesses to create bespoke apps that help them work faster and smarter.
But with the app he created for today’s festival, Simon went outside his area of expertise to create an app festival goers can use to organise themselves on the day.
“Last year, the festival sold three or four thousand programmes,” said Simon.
“But this year they felt it would be better to do the same thing with an app.
“They wanted to be able to make changes as they went along and for it to be as simple as possible.
“I’m more than happy with what we’ve got and the team are as well.”
The app, already downloaded more than 1,300 times, features a schedule which can be sorted by time, artist or genre, with the venue in which each band is playing plotted on a map of the town centre.
There is also a blog updated by the Barnsley Live team, profiles for each band and a screen where festival-goers can upload their own pictures.
Simon said the team had a long list of features they wanted to include in the app, but because of time constraints these were set aside to be used in next year’s version - which is already being planned out.
Simon mainly works with businesses, allowing them to streamline production and logistics processes, and said this is the first time he has made an app that is publicly available.
“It’s definitely been a different experience,” said Simon.
“Thinking about how it looks and feels has been important - we’ve been careful about how people can interact with it.
“I can normally go out and show people how to use the apps we make, but with this we’ve just released it on the Apple and Android stores.
“It’s set to be one of my most successful apps, if as many people use it as bought a programme last year.”
Barnsley Live takes place this afternoon, with the first round of bands due to play at 1pm.
Download it to your device here.
