Konzertmeister: “Believe In Your Product!”

Describe Konzertmeister in 50 words or less.

Konzertmeister is an app for android and iOS that helps people, who are active in musical groups to get more efficient towards scheduling their rehearsals and performances so they can really focus on the music.

Why did you decide to start the project? When did you discover the need for it?

One of my favorite hobbies is music. I am an active member in different choirs and also play in various orchestras in Vienna and lower Austria. As I am also one of the musical leaders of a wind-band in my hometown I am included in the hard process of scheduling appointments. Who will attend the next rehearsal? Does it make sense to try a specific piece of music without knowing if you have anyone on the drums? Will we be able to perform a piece of music with the remaining time we have? These questions and many more are hard to answer if you don’t have a good overview of your upcoming appointments and who will attend them.

The ideal case is that every band-member is 100% reliable and always there – but as the members are very often volunteers this scenario is not very realistic. The solution to this problem is often an overload of communication channels – text messages, WhatsApp groups, reminder mails, Facebook events, phone calls and many more. This was the point when I thought it could be really helpful to have a single tool that manages exactly this task: scheduling appointments for musical groups and collecting attendance information in a simple and well structured way.

How do you expect people to use the app?

The main usage of this app is to reduce communication overload for scheduling rehearsals and other appointments in musical groups. For a normal member the app is quite easy to use: you get informed that there is a new appointment for you, you open the app and submit your attendance status – that’s all there is to do. And of course you can also check your appointment list if there are any existing appointments you should attend to manage your private appointments. In later versions the app will remind you via push-notifications if you forgot to submit your attendance status in time.

As a leader of a group the appointment details are the most important part – there you’re able to see the live attendance data for your created appointment – who will attend? Who will not? This information is needed for planning and making the right decisions.

What features does the app offer?

Well, the initial step when starting to use the app is to create a group and add your members. Adding members is achieved via entering the mail-addresses of users. To quicken this onboarding mechanism you can use a Web-Interface, which allows you to import users via CSV or by copy pasting to an input form on your computer. After your members are imported you can easily start to map your organizational structures to Konzertmeister, like building sub-groups, adding leaders to the whole group or to sub-groups and much more.

After this step you can go on and create your appointments; for the whole group – or for one or more sub-groups. Konzertmeister takes care that every member can see or administrate the appointment according to his or her role. Members get informed about their new appointment via mail and are then able to edit their attendance data via the app. It is also possible to subscribe to the Konzertmeister-iCal feed and have your appointments always up to date in your private calendar.

In what ways do you measure your success and how do you make sure you don’t lose track?

In the short term it would be great to have enough active users to improve the app step by step by learning how Konzertmeister is used and which features are still missing or need improvement.

As the app is and will remain free, success cannot be measured in financial numbers – the number of active users and their feedback will be the main criteria.

What were the biggest challenges you faced building Konzertmeister?

Konzertmeister is the first cross-platform app I have ever developed so there were many new things to learn. I think one of biggest challenges when designing the first version of an app is to find the right balance between “keeping it simple” and “over-engineering”. As I have a strong technical background it is often hard to avoid over-engineering and losing yourself in technical details. If you don’t want to invest too much time you have to force yourself to take pragmatic approaches at some times. My way to reach this goal was to exactly define the main use-case of the app and only build those features that were essential to fulfill this use-case.

What was your most memorable moment so far?

I showed a demo that I had installed on my phone to some friends who are also musicians and know many people with the same background – and they really liked the idea. I also had other conversations with people from musical groups that encouraged me to realize the idea because it could help them – this was the main motivation to keep track.

And of course, when I finally achieved that Konzertmeister was available in the app stores for Android and Apple Phones.

What advice would you give fellow people who start their own ventures?

I worked on Konzertmeister only in my leisure time alongside my full-time job: this was only possible because it was really fun to build the app and see it evolve. And I think that is the best advice I can give – have fun with what you do. Even if only a few people will use the app I will not be disappointed – because for me it was a great challenge and I learned a lot of new things.

Another important thing I learned earlier in another startup I was part of – don’t expect too much. It is crucial to think positive and believe in your product – but you should stay on the ground with your expectations – otherwise the real world can hit you very hard.

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