Map Events collaboration with Radio France to imagine a map of free services
Map Events is an app that centralises all kinds of events available in cities and their suburbs, whether it is a party in a club, a sports event or a charity gala. Map Events works just like a virtual leaflet. It is useful when discovering a new city, but also for the people living in remote areas, where the communication of events usually happens through banners and posters in the streets and local shops.
The founder of this startup, Yann Senet, and Iniz Becker, innovation project leader at Radio France, met at the French Tech Summit organised by the French Tech Alpes in Annecy, France. After a few discussions, they knew a collaboration between Map Events and the ICI radio network would be a great opportunity to build a mapping project that would enable the engagement of local communities.
What was the experimentation with the ICI network like?
This meetup followed a hackathon organised in June 2025 with the various teams of the ICI network around the theme of Mapping and local communities. Among the ideas that caught the juries’ attention, ICI c’est gratuit (ICI it’s free) suggested deploying a map listing every free local activity.
It was in this context that Yann Senet, founder of Map Events, joined the project. With more than 90.000 events in France now listed on Map Events, the challenge for Yann was to consolidate his approach to mapping thanks to the complementary perspective of his teammates at Radio France (Maud Czaja, editor-in-chief ICI Alsace; Thomas Debono, head of programs ICI Besançon and Stéphanie Mounier, head of programs ICI Cotentin) and of Olivier Kovarski, teacher and researcher in marketing at EM Normandie.
Between September and November 2025, the goal of this team was to produce an operational roadmap addressing various issues: the target audience, the goals and expected results of the project, the delays, the projected costs… all while learning to work together.
What are the benefits of this collaboration?
For Yann Senet, the collaboration with this team allowed him to improve the validation system of the data’s quality in the Map Events app. Talking with the listeners of the ICI radios also allowed him to validate his initial design decisions.
Meetings with the digital teams of Radio France will be held to discuss the overall design of the app: colours, readability, accessibility… The goal being the optimisation of the user experience while keeping a strong and warm identity.
What’s next for Map Events?
For Yann, the priority now is about making his app shine in the eyes of the general public and the event organisers all around France, and maximising the media visibility of Map Events.
He also wants to go further by opening his app even more to local communities and initiatives by using this collaboration with the ICI network. His ambition is to map the life in motion, the one that is created everyday by the territories, free, accessible and just a click away.
For more information
Visit the Map Events website.
Join the Sandbox Radio France, open innovation program at Radio France.
