Ida-Viru County's shared events platform marks over a year online

For more than a year, Estonia's Ida-Viru County has operated a joint digital platform called Ida-Viru Events, which gathers information about events from across the county. All seven local municipalities use the platform, and some institutions also rely on it to populate content on their own websites.

Automatic translation and unusual promotion

Kaisa Pukk, a representative of the project, told the "Aktuaalne Kaamera" program that one of the platform's advantages is automatic translation: when an organizer enters an event's name and description in Estonian, the system immediately translates it into English and Russian.

Pukk noted, however, that changing people's habit of looking for events primarily on social media is not easy, so the team has resorted to unusual promotional tricks. At a large fair in Toila, for example, hundreds of visitors received so-called "culture fines." Many initially thought these were real fines, but there was nothing to pay — instead, recipients were invited to visit the platform's website.

Easier work for organizers and users

At some institutions, information entered on the platform automatically appears on their own websites as well, simplifying organizers' work. Denis Bjerkland, an employee of the Narva Tourist Information Centre, explained that organizers like his team often fill in event details directly on the Ida-Viru Events site, after which the information is automatically pulled onto their own website the next day.

Users also praise the platform for making it easy to search for events. One user, Alina, said she periodically uses the site to find events — recently searching for something to send her mother to, she found a ballet performance and bought tickets as a gift.

Since the platform launched, organizers have added nearly 3,000 events, and the site has been visited by 90,000 unique users.