Buccaneer Sessions – Events Platform

Buccaneer Sessions is all about connecting you to the amazing locations we Surf, Sail, Kite, Ride and Paddle. Find new spots, create and join Events & Sessions, get messages, news and session alerts from locations. Never miss an opportunity to get out there and do the things you love.

As our location and brand partners have started to utilize the Location Listing and Sessions platform, we have built out the Sessions functionality to incorporate Events.

We trialed this for the first time as a bit of a one-off project for the Kitesurfing Armada in 2021 where we developed the concept of an umbrella Session (an Event). The marked difference between a regular Session and an Umbrella Session was the ability to create a rolling schedule of sub sessions between a start and end date.

The Session functionality lends itself extremely well to Events with composite activities running chronologically and/or simultaneously. Each Event Session was able to capture details of the activity and had its own notice board so if there was discussion relevant to a specific Session the conversation could be contained to an individual, relevant component of the event. App/Event subscribers could opt into the whole event or Event Session by Session, therefore only receiving push notifications from the specific items within the Event they are interested in.

The App scaled very nicely receiving around 5,000 event participants interested in everything from Sunrise yoga on the beach, The British Kitesurfing Championships through to the DJ’s and bands playing at the festival, culminating in Dodgy headlining the main stage on the Saturday night.

New Sessions could be added in real time or existing Sessions could be amended in terms of time / location. In the event of any change to the schedule push notifications are automatically sent out to all subscribers solving the challenge of comms at a busy event. In terms of activities, challenges and or competitions, such as the Kite surf championships both participants and the audience could receive a real time feed from the event notifying stakeholders of what is happening and when creating a real sense of community and involvement.

 Events can be run as community events (free) or using the Paid Session functionality, Ticket sales and payment can also be accommodated.

 Since then we have used the app to create a load more events including The National Students Windsurfing Association annul meets 2021 &2022 . The British Kitesurfing Free Style Championships 2021 & 2022 and most recently the Hike Bike Paddle charity event held by the Youth Adventure Trust. We created the challenge platform for all participants to understand the Schedule from Registration, Safety Briefing, the challenge itself and then the gala dinner and prize giving, Throughout the challenge our team liaised with the event marshals broadcasting the teams participating in the challenge progress as they parsed the various checkpoints. Updates included posts on the leader board to photos of the teams on the course. It was an epic event, and the app really gave a sense of community and inclusiveness to the participants and those watching the event from near or far.

 

Benefits for Subscriber Businesses:

• Great events platform with all the necessary communications and scheduling tools built in. (Inc: GPS coordinate of event. Date, time, joining instructions real time information service)
• Include your following in any activities or events with guaranteed push notifications. Increase permanent following.
• Allow external parties to see events happening by location, promoting your brand. Participants and audience get a community view to the event in advance and in real time during it.
• Support for Hyper links in Session Noticeboards allowing connection to external web pages

 

Short video with a real world example of an event set up in The Buccaneer Sessions App: 

2022 British Kitesurfing Freestyle Championships with the BKSA