Speedify LIVE: Creating ChristmasPrism, the App for Discovering & Sharing Holiday Lights

With the Holidays approaching, the 35th episode of Speedify Live is all about the Christmas Spirit! Our guests are Mike Kane, Speedify engineer and creator of the ChristmasPrism app, and Tim Gallagher, social media manager of PECO Connect, sponsor of ChristmasPrism. ChristmasPrism is an app that helps you find the best Holiday lights in your area and beyond, and share your own festive house with your community.

Mike and Tim talked to us about how the app came to be, how their partnership started, their 2021 Christmas Lights Contest, and everything that is Christmas!

Here are our 5 takeaways from our first festive livestream:

1. ChristmasPrism started out with Mike Kane, father of two, wanting to take his kids to see Christmas Lights, but not knowing where to go. After some research he found a gap in the market so he decided to create an app that would help people find the best Christmas Lights in their area. 
2. While it originally started out as a small community project in the Marple Newtown area, ChristmasPrism has now outgrown the USA! The furthest it has reached is Australia. 
3. ChristmasPrism has many great features: push notifications, a variety of icons representing the amount of likes a house gets, saving and commenting on houses, and a brand new list tab where you can scroll through the festive houses Instagram-style! The app can even navigate you to each house with the click of a button! 
4. When asked “How to get started if you have a good idea?” Mike says that you have to follow two crucial steps: 1. Make your idea clear by doing the necessary research, and 2. Work out the logistics of your idea! Once you have those two down, you might just be able to create your own successful app.
5. Mike has faced many Streamergencies throughout the years. But the worst one was when he missed his son’s first full sentences on a video call due to losing connection to a public Wi-Fi. Ever since then, he never leaves the house without Speedify on, and neither should you!