A new app for the Winterval festival in Waterford has been launched for visitors this year. The Winterval app was created by 15-year-old coder Jordan Casey, one of the youngest app creators in Europe.
The Winterval app is free to download and works offline. It will help users navigate the programme of events for the festival, which runs until 31 December (except Christmas Eve and Christmas Day). Users will be able to search events, access tickets and create a mini map of the events they choose to attend. There’s also a built-in Winterval radio station playing festival music.
A range of events are taking place during the family festival, many of which are free of charge. The city of Waterford will be teeming with festive cheer with a Christmas market comprising 60 decorated log cabins, an animal farm with reindeer, a giant singing Christmas tree, and, of course, Santa in his grotto.
“I was very excited to develop this app. I went to Winterval with my brother and sister last year and it was really great fun so I really wanted to help out this year,” said Casey, who has taken a departure from games development to build the tourism app. “I had to use my coding skills in a new category and I really enjoyed that. I learned a lot about the event too, so I’m looking forward to going now,” he added.
Jordan has has seven games on the Apple app-store already and is the chief executive of Casey Games. He has also just launched Teachware, a new cloud app aimed at teachers to help them manage information about their students.
The young executive has also travelled the world to tech conferences including TEDx conference in New Delhi; the Cannes Lions Festival; the Bett education conference in London and the Festival of Games and The Next Web conference in Amsterdam. He also made a presentation at TiEcon in Silicon Valley to CEOs pf companies such as Netlfix, LinkedIn, Paypal and Amazon.
