Goodbye, Ventfull

Harvard has its fair share of technology troubles: Omni’s section of the dining hall menu (check it out for the full range of available drinks like “water” and “milk” in a dhall near you!), the tragic downfall of Harvard wifi at the start of this semester, or the “No Prediction” notice that shows up on the Rider app minutes before you’re planning to get on the shuttle to the quad. Recently, another attempt at utilizing technology to enhance Harvard students’ lives bit the dust: Ventfull.

For those who don’t read the UC’s emails, Ventfull was an event-planning app that publicized different happenings on campus, including the location of free food, open parties, and cultural events taking place each week. It was a good idea, but alas, in light of very low usage in the Harvard community, the smartphone calendar application ceased to exist in recent weeks. In its memory, Flyby has written an obituary for the event-planning creation that never really was:

Ventful, born just over a year ago, was a beautiful spam email and one-time phone download. When first created for the purpose of streamlining different events on Harvard’s campus, most students were apathetic or mildly excited, because notices from different email lists that everyone accidentally joins at the beginning of their freshman year are the highlight of any reasonable person’s morning. Indeed, the Harvard student population couldn’t wait to get on another list that would sit in their inbox unread. In the beginning, perhaps a few read Ventfull’s notices. A League of Legends viewing party? We're gonna pass on that one. But as the weeks passed, the Harvard community began to forget about the application. Ventfull’s “upcoming events” was marked as spam, and college students across campus resolved to spend another riveting Friday night without any sense of the outside world.