As a busy college campus in an urban area, something is always taking place at and around UW-Madison. In response, students have banded together to create a website to help fellow UW-Madison community members never miss another important event.
UW-Madison computer science and engineering junior Jacob Schieber created Zuntik.com during the spring 2014 semester, originally called MySyllabiMadison. Schieber, alongside accounting junior Andrew McLean, launched the website as a digital solution to unify every campus calendar. While the site originally focused on compiling academic schedules and events, Zuntik has since made a transition to covering more social events within the Madison campus and community.
Zuntik, which receives its name from the ancient Yiddish word meaning “Sunday” or “first day of the week,” streams notifications about daily events ranging from student organization meetings and fundraisers to lectures, concerts and local business promotions.
Schieber hopes Zuntik’s similarities to other popular social media sources will make the website both fun and easy to use for other UW-Madison students.
“[Zuntik is] a lot like Yik Yak in the sense that it’s a localized feed of everything that’s going on, only it’s specific to events,” Schieber said. “It’s also a lot like Twitter, in that you can subscribe to all the communities you’re involved with.”
Schieber initially launched Zuntik smartphone apps on both the Android and iOS app stores, but after dramatic redesigns to the website, Schieber removed them from the market. He anticipates to re-release a new and improved Zuntik app on the iOS App Store within a month.
Temporarily, the service requires its users to be invited via specified passwords to create a Zuntik account.
“By fall of 2015, we hope to have a fully live, functioning website that anyone can create an account on,” Schieber said.
Schieber and his team have so far received more than $27,000 in competition winnings and grants to aid with Zuntik’s development.
Should Zuntik prove to be successful on the UW-Madison campus, Schieber hopes to bring the website’s services to UW-Milwaukee and other schools within the UW System.
“We’re creating Zuntik so that every student on campus can know everything that’s going on,” Schieber said. “We’re telling students, ‘Don’t get left out again.’ Nobody likes to miss out on their events.”
UW-Madison community members can gain access to Zuntik.com up until noon Feb. 13. by registering for an account with the password “DailyCardinal2015.”
