'I thought it was quiet until I started events guide'
LAURA MCTHOMASA woman who launched a website to showcase events taking place across the Isle of Man said the project "opened my eyes" as to how much goes on.
Laura McThomas, who moved over to the island one year ago from Reading with her family, said she found that she often did not know where to look or would miss events due to not knowing about them.
With a background in technology and delivering large-scale projects, she launched Manx Life as a free tool.
"When we moved over, we were always just told the Isle of Man is a really quiet place, but since we have started doing this, our eyes have been opened as to how much is actually going on," she said.
The website, which has over 700 events on it, automatically pulls them from various sources, but also relies on people sending activities in.
Some of the more unique events taking place included weekly Pokemon meets, talks on space shuttle exploration and art and craft social events for adults.
'Tightknit community'
"It started from a personal need to find out what was going on on the island - we're a family and we felt that it was quite hard to find out about events.
"We were always told that the island is quite quiet, but I think you need to know where to look.
"All this information was spread in so many different places when it comes to events and what's going on from Facebook to posters to word of mouth," she continued.
"We personally would find out about things that were happening once they had already passed, and think we would have loved to do that, and friends found the same."
Since its launch one month ago, the website has amassed 4,000 users, with about 75% returning to it, she said.
"I think the proof of how good this tool will be eventually is if we start to see more people going to events
"Everyone has been saying we have needed this, but we didn't know what it looked like, but we needed it," she added.
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