Hundreds of campus clubs are now just a click away for students.
This past August, recent alumnus Richard Bryan Concio, Sci’25, developed ClubSeeker—a website with a database of over 300 clubs—both AMS-ratified and unaffiliated—organized into more than 10 categories. Students can explore clubs through ‘club cards,’ which provide descriptions and links to their social media pages. In an interview with The Journal, Bryan Concio shared his motivations behind developing the site.
“While I was in my last year [at Queen’s], I tried looking for clubs that I could join, but realized it was difficult as the resources that were given to me didn’t really give me much to work with,” Bryan Concio said. “I noticed that a lot of other students were also going through the same issue, and I wanted to help out the community.”
Bryan Concio’s goal in creating ClubSeeker was to compile all the data available on different clubs into one easily accessible platform.
“I created web scrapers that could scrape any data they could from Queen’s clubs, through links like Instagram or even the AMS website,” he said. “I also emailed some clubs, mentioned that I was creating a website, and asked if they had a description or bio that they could give me.”
Since launching ClubSeeker in August, the page has been visited over 1,000 times, according to Bryan Concio, but marketing the website remains a challenge—especially since he graduated this past summer.
“It averages around 60 users per day,” he said. “My initial source of traffic, my post on Reddit [about the club], has around 9,600 views. I’m still struggling in terms of how to market the whole website to other students, now that I’m out of Queen’s.”
Through social media, Bryan Concio has been able to receive student feedback on ClubSeeker. It was a Reddit commenter who initially suggested he add non-AMS ratified clubs to the site.
“That’s why my site is different from the other AMS ones,” Bryan Concio said. “Because it also features other non-ratified clubs that people just created. I created a Google form in which people could add in all their club info, and I received some responses that aren’t from ratified clubs, which was a good sign.”
Bryan Concio hopes the site will create better social lives for students by helping them find like-minded friends.
Tags
AMS clubs, Clubseeker, Student app
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Kevin
Wow this seems great, I wished this was around when I was a student!