Tech Talk: ActivityHero

ActivityHero helps parents find, plan and book kids classes and camps. After-school activities and summer camps like the ballet or basketball class, lego camp, overnight camps, you name it! Started by 2 moms to solve their own problem, they are inspired by their mission to help parents raise active & healthy kids. There are alternatives to LCD screens and angry birds, and they want to help parents discover these.

San Francisco Summer Camp

The summer camp problem: Big puzzle to solve every year. Kids are out of school 10 weeks during summer. Need a safe and fun alternative for school, some parents plan as early as January to ensure enrollment and coordination with friends. Usual criteria for working parents is proximity to work or home, so pick up and drop off on the way to/from work; extended care availability; ability to plan with friends; spend a lot of time collecting recommendations from friends, calling up camps to find out schedules, availabilities and make reservations. There are new skills kids get to learn in summer camp that they usually can’t during the year. Did you know there are camps for horseriding; lego/robotics; blacksmithing; MBA/entrepreneurship; cooking; photography; fashion designing; digital media/technology; bollywood dancing, etc? I had no idea. You can imagine that Archery was particularly popular after Brave and Hunger Games.

With ActivityHero, they can help you find classes and camps by interest, schedule, distance, age. Not just find, they want to make it easier to plan, coordinate and book these activities as well.

Planning/Coordination is a big problem: sharing calendars to coordinate schedules between friends because kids love to go to camp with friends, easier for carpooling. Whether it’s emailing excel sheets, or sketching on paper or coordinating via phone, this is a big logistical nightmare! Watch out for the calendar feature that ActivityHero will be releasing the end of this month – it will help parents discover camps and classes by date.

Paper Forms: Need to fill out the same emergency contact, pick up/drop off etc over and over again. More kids you have the more times you need to fill these out. ActivityHero is working on one click registrations – enrolling you kid in soccer camp should be no more difficult than buying a soccer ball on Amazon.

It’s not just about summer camps, but check out ActivityHero for winter break camps, spring break, fall break, veteran’s day camps etc. – anytime parents have to go to work, we have suggestions on where kids can go to camp.

Camp organizers are starting to create their summer camp schedules, so keep checking activityhero to find new camps every week!

GIVEAWAYS!

Parents can win a free week of technology & lego camp (worth over $350), from TechKnowHow camps, with 19 locations in SF Bay Area, or Lavner Tennis Camp (worth $450) with 11 locations around Philly by simply entering their email id and zip code at http://www.activityhero.com/free-classes-and-camps