Center'd

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from a guy called Mike over at Center’d.com asking if I’d do a review of their site. Now I don’t usually do that sort of thing, but I do always like checking out the sites that are forwarded to me. I must say though that I was rather impressed with Center’d when I took a look… so much so I decided to take the plunge and write a quick post about it!

I suppose it’s best to start by explaining what Center’d is, and for that I’m going to cheat and copy it from their site (There’s a one sentence summary after the italics if you want to skip it);

We just love it when a plan comes together. Unfortunately, that rarely happens without heroic efforts, hundreds of emails, and a fair amount of anxiety.

Who is going, where are we going, when are we going. Easy, right? Well, not so much. In fact, no one has created an experience that combines the best of planning tools with the best of local search. And until someone does, we will either continue to endure, or stop making plans altogether. Sigh.

But wait! At Center'd, we’ve been thinking about how to solve the challenges that exist in making plans. From the smallest get together, where you just can’t decide on where to eat and oh-my-goodness-I-can’t-take-it-anymore-maybe-I’ll-just-stay-home-and-wash-my-cat, to the large fundraisers and school activities that require signups and hundreds of emails and weeks of meticulous planning, one thing is clear: We can help you spend less time planning, and more time enjoying yourself.

We do this by focusing on three categories:

People - Connect to people you trust, and get their opinions and information to help you find that perfect place or make successful that successful plan.

Places - See what the crowds think by seeing ratings and reviews from across the web, or find out what your trusted friends think.

Plans - Easily invite friends, find out where everyone wants to go and when with place and time voting, empower volunteers to sign up for tasks, and stay on top of it with reminders and notifications.

So basically, Center’d gives you a platform to create and manage events with minimal fuss (as large as you like or as small as you like), but within that there is a platform for finding places like bars, coffee shops, halls etc and add the locations to your event. What I like about it is the simple and clean interface, and the overall ease of use… I was able to put together a demo event in a minute or two, which is brilliant for those small meetings or spontaneous events that come up. You can find the demo event here by the way, feel free to mess around and have a tinker.

I have to say, the thing I like most about Center’d though is the fact that you don’t need an account to be a part of an event, and to take part in the organization of it once it’s been created. This really saves time for those who just want to click on an email link and say “yup, I’ll be there”, but also means that those who want to be a little more involved in the event don’t actually need to have an account to do so. Although I had to make an account to create the demo event, it only took the same amount of time to do so as it did to make the demo itself, which again, is another bonus.
Creating events themselves is very stress free, and includes all the things you could need; Event name, description, location, time, whether you want to make it invite only or public etc, whether you want to track RSVP’s and whether you want to be able to ask volunteers to sign up for your event. It even lets you add a little picture for the event, you can choose from the default ones, which are taken from flickr or you can add your own from the web or your desktop. I should also mention that you can choose to have a vote on the time and location on the event.

Once you send out the invites and links to the event page your invitees will see a cool little page that details the time location etc and allows them to vote on these if you have requested a vote. It has a google map to map out the event location(s), an attendees section and also a comments section. Along the top it gives you the options to add tasks for the event, share the event, and send messages (as of yet I’ve only tried the sharing bit).

There’s not much bad to say about Center’d (apart from the fact we spell centered like that in the UK so I’ve had to correct my spelling every time I’ve typed it!), what I will say though is that I had difficulty adding my locations into the event and found I had to type a specific place otherwise it would take an American bias… but apart from that, I love it and as event tools go it’s a very good one. I must also say though that it’s got a lot of potential to be used in a school environment, they even give you templates for typical school events (which can be found here). Overall a very nice little tool for a multitude of situations!

The Bass Player

(p.s. If you think I should do a few more of these please say in the comments)