Activation Days: bookings for the outdoor event
Case study
- My role
- I built the booking platform: experience catalogue, cart, checkout, attendee area and admin.
- Duration
- March to April 2026, for the May 2026 event
The problem
Activation Days offered different experiences across two days, some paid and some free. Attendees had to pick more than one in a single purchase and find them again later, and the event team had to run everything without a developer.
What I did and why
- One cart: free and paid experiences together, and the cart stays saved even if the page is closed.
- Free without payment: when the cart only holds free experiences, the order is confirmed straight away without going through Stripe.
- Stripe checkout inside the site, with coupons.
- Attendee area: accounts with login and a list of one's own bookings.
- Confirmation emails in Italian or English, sent in the background with retries if something goes wrong.
Results
- 2 daysof bookable experiences
- Free and paidin the same cart
- IT + ENsite and emails in two languages
Stack highlights
- Next.js 16
- Payload CMS 3
- MongoDB
- Stripe Embedded Checkout
- Zustand
- React Email + Resend
- tRPC
- next-intl
Working on something similar? Let's talk.
Get in touchThe problem here was different from classic ticketing: attendees picked several experiences across the two days, some paid and some free, and needed to find them again later. I kept a single cart for everything: free experiences are confirmed straight away without going through payment, paid ones go to the Stripe checkout inside the site. Confirmations go out by email in Italian or English, and the event team manages experiences, programme and orders from the admin.
It is the same work I did for the B Corp Summit and for Impact Summit, adapted to an event with experiences instead of tickets.
What I bring to an agency or a small business from this project
- A purchase flow that handles free and paid products together.
- A private area for attendees, without an account system built from scratch.
- Ticketing already proven across several events, ready to adapt to the next one.
Realized for MagNet in collaboration with Ride On
