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App ensures no photo unseen, no memory forgotten

Steven Perkins, For The Miami Student

Miami University alumnus Saxon Baum is changing the way people attend and later relive events. The application, which is slated to release this week, is called WeVue. The crowdsourcing social media app is designed to help users view events including concerts, sports games and life events: such as weddings and birthday parties.

Baum was a senior at Miami University when he began developing the app.

"The idea came to me as a junior living at Old Nash," Baum said. "I couldn't get to the concerts I wanted to go to so I decided to create a way to share the full experience."

The app allows users to all drop their pictures and videos to an open event page where they can compile both their own and other pictures and videos along with music from their phone's library to create short videos to share with friends and family.

Baum said there are video productions from events, but content is often the pictures from the band or venue photographer.

"I wanted to make use of everyone's iPhone pictures," Baum said. "I take so many photos and videos on trips and at events and then I just let them sit on my computer and no one ever sees them."

First-year Adam Olson said he likes the idea of the app.

"It's a very innovative idea," Olson said. "It expands on current social media to make it more convenient. It's fitting that he is from Miami because this is such a social school."

As a political science major and entrepreneurship minor, Baum said Miami helped him throughout the beginning stages of brainstorming. He said he was very active socially and always enjoyed the music scene at bars like Brick Street and The Woods.

"I always knew I wanted to start my own business, I just never stuck with one thing too long," Baum said. "But Miami taught me to laser focus on one thing."

Baum called Miami business professor Wayne Speer his mentor. Dr. Speer said Baum was always capable of something like this.

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"He was very innovative and creative," Speer said. "He is similar to many businessmen: They have lots of good ideas. The biggest challenge is to start with one and work it."

Baum, along with his cousin and CEO of WeVue Taylor Wallace, can see the app being used at all kinds of events.

"I would really like to see the app be used to capture graduation at Miami," Baum said. "There are going to be so many parents and grandparents all taking pictures. And you can export any video or photo from the event page to your camera roll."

Wallace has similar visions.

"We would like this to become the go to app for photographing events," Wallace said. "Whether that be the Super Bowl or your kid's birthday party. And eventually we could be acquired by a much larger social media app."

First-year Ian McKenna said he is very interested and wants to start using the app after hearing about it.

"I will definitely be downloading this app, it sounds revolutionary," McKenna said. "This could be the next big social media. I could even see an app like Instagram trying to buy it out."

WeVue has not, however, been problem-free, Baum and his five full-time staff faced their fair share of setbacks.

"Software is never on time," Baum said. "You always have to add a couple weeks and a couple thousand dollars to your budget."

Users can find events using geobased, which uses your phone's location services, and keyword searches to find other friend's photo and video events. Users can also create private, invite-based events. These private events would eliminate random users from accessing your photos and videos.

WeVue is expected to be on the app store at the end of this week or the beginning of next week and will be free to download.