Waterford schoolboy and app developer Jordan Casey has created a dedicated app for the city’s Winterval festival. The free app provides a comprehensive guide for visitors to the seasonal activities at heritage sites around the city.
At 14 years old, Casey is one of the youngest app developers in Europe and already has seven games in the App Store. As CEO of Casey Games, he has appeared as a speaker at major tech conferences around the world.
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.
The app also provides information on places to eat and stay when in Waterford, along with TripAdvisor reviews.
“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.
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.
The Winterval app is available now from Google Play and coming soon to the App Store. Casey also recently launched Teachware, a cloud-based app to help teachers manage information about their students.
