Flutter Belgium

In the dynamic world of technology, community-driven initiatives like Flutter Belgium play a pivotal role in shaping the future. Flutter Belgium, partnered with impaktfull around 1 year ago , with an ambitious objective: to enhance their digital footprint and support their expansion. This case study delves into how our collaboration not only revamped Flutter Belgium's online presence but also bolstered their community engagements through innovative solutions.

Project Overview

Client Description

Flutter Belgium is a meetup group, advocating for the Flutter framework and uniting enthusiasts and professionals with shared interests. Despite their enthusiasm and leadership, the potential for a greater impakt was constrained by restricted online functionality and insufficient resources to expand their activities.

The Challenge

Prior to our involvement, Flutter Belgium encountered considerable challenges. Their website had not been fully optimised, and their ability to engage with the community was hindered by a lack of sufficient resources for hosting and live streaming their eagerly awaited meetups. It was more considered the job of the hosting company to take up this role. In order to grow something had to change here.

Solutions Provided

1) Website Development

We took on the challenge of developing not just one, but 3 websites for Flutter Belgium - the main site, madein.flutterbelgium.be and the raffle.flutterbelgium.be. We focused on creating user-friendly, interactive, and visually appealing sites that truly represent the spirit of Flutter. And makes it easy to learn something about the Flutter landscape in Belgium.

2) Features and Technologies

Building Flutter applications that can be used to extend & support the Flutter Belgium community makes it easier to not only organise events but also bring people together. While Flutter supports web, the madein.flutterbelgium.be should be SEO optimised which Flutter currently don't support very well. That is why we used Next.js for the madein.flutterbelgium.be website. Alongside with github actions to streamline the CI/CD pipeline. So we don't have to release new versions every time someone wants to add the app itself.

"With projects like Made in Flutter Belgium, impaktfull is lowering the barrier for enterprises to choose the framework while giving other companies and developers a place to share their work and connect." - 

Fré Dumazy (Speaker & Member of Flutter Belgium)

3) Sponsorship and Support‍

impaktfull extended its support beyond just technical expertise. We provided financial and resource-based sponsorship to assist in the expansion of Flutter Belgium's community initiatives. Our sponsorship facilitated the acquisition of necessary resources, live streaming equipment, promotional materials, and refreshments, ensuring that each event was well-organised.

4) Impakt on Flutter Belgium

Our sponsorship directly translated into more extensive and impaktfull community events, increased membership, and greater visibility in the Flutter space. 15th of may Flutter Belgium had a record amount of attendees. The max of 60 people signed up to share knowledge and do some networking.

5) Live Streams and Recorded Talks

Recognising the power of digital engagement, we facilitated high-quality live streams and recorded talks for each meetup. This included providing the necessary software, technical setup, and support. All the talks can be watched again on YouTube by the whole world. This also adds to the vision of Flutter Belgium by bringing knowledge to Flutter developers. It is not always possible to join in person, and a lot of talks are super interesting, it would have been a shame to only keep that in the Flutter Belgium community. Now the whole world has access to it.

Livestreams significantly expand the reach of meetups, allowing hosting companies to engage with a larger audience beyond physical attendees. Additionally, recordings of these events provide valuable content for future marketing and training purposes, enhancing the company's visibility and credibility.

Koen is our invaluable resource for all things Flutter Belgium. He welcomed us into the community, ensuring our active involvement. Thanks to his excellent support, we hosted a Flutter meetup at our office and shared our expertise through several community talks.

Pieter-Paulus Vertongen (Member, Speaker and Host with Aaltra - Flutter Belgium)

6) Raffle website and app

To make sure attendees get the most out of the meetups we created a raffle website that allows attendees to win prizes (Dashes, T-shirts, stickers, pins, event tickets,...) This not only increases interaction but leaves some attendees with a fun souvenir of the meetup. To extend the website we used the raffle website codebase (which is Flutter) and build the mobile app as well. After all Flutter started as a mobile framework. The idea is to have the Flutter Belgium app as a constantly improving project (that is open source) and provides value for attendees and centralizes all Flutter Belgium information.

Results

Enhanced Digital Presence‍

The new websites received overwhelmingly positive feedback and Flutter Belgium is now easy to find on Google.

Event Success

‍The live streams and recorded talks became a highlight, in some cases multiplying the reach of certain talks because they can be rewatched at an other time, and establishing a new benchmark for community events.

impaktfull elevated Flutter Belgium from a small group to a relevant and growing community. Together with his peers, Koen made Flutter Belgium more relevant than ever.

William Verhaeghe (Member & Speaker)

Community Growth‍

Flutter Belgium witnessed a significant surge in their community engagement, increase in membership and event participation. After only 1 year we can see how much Flutter Belgium has grown in this timespan.

How does this case fit with impaktfull?

Bringing communities closer togheter is really important to us. Helping to organise the physical meetups while expanding to live streaming the talks only proves how important it is to us to share knowledge and learn from eachother.

Conclusion

Our journey with Flutter Belgium exemplifies impaktfull's commitment to leveraging technology for community growth. The results speak for themselves: a revitalised digital presence, a flourishing community, and a series of successful events. We are excited to continue this partnership, fostering innovation and connection within the tech community.