The Student Balkan Rally is an ambitious project, enabling young people to embark on a life changing journey across Europe, from England to Macedonia. Students who take part get to party for two weeks while experiencing the historic sites of Europe and meeting new friends along the way. What better way for the participants to keep tabs on their fellow team members and rivals than with a social network? “We wanted a platform that enables people to meet up and arrange events themselves whilst also allowing the owner to post events too.” Explains the site owner, James.

Although an annual event, the site is a permanent fixture. Members can stay in touch with people they met on previous rallies or learn more about next year’s rally. The site functions both as a promotional tool, an organisational tool and as a vital means of communications for the rally participants, spread out across the continent. James has benefited as much from the standard features of SocialGO as he has from the additional features available from the Widget Store. “Members needed to be able to create their own teams so we used the groups for this by just changing the group tab to teams. It’s also important to us that members are able to upload their photos and videos as they go along.” He continues. “We got the chat room widget because it’s free and makes it easier for members to keep in touch. We also bought the Foot Doctor widget so navigation became that little bit easier for users.”

The network has a large flash banner of relevant images and bold titles, and the design is minimal and well-composed. This makes it easy to navigate and less likely to confuse the user. In addition to the Foot Doctor, James also purchased the Tab Doctor widget, which he says “Made the whole network look a lot more tidy and professional.” There is a large calendar clock, counting the minutes until the next rally and creating a sense of immediate urgency that adds to the exciting nature of the network.

A site as professional as this looks very difficult to create, but owner James assures us this was not the case. “It was easy to build, we had help from the Concierge team with it – this was particularly useful when starting out as we had limited knowledge of the system… it didn’t take long to get to grips with it though.”

We at SocialGO hope that James, and all the participants of the 2010 Balkan Rally, have an unforgettable adventure.