Comprehensive Izmir City Assistant by 2006 CS Graduate
Bilsay Yildirim, a 2006 graduate of the Computer Engineering Department of Bilkent University, established an online city guide, called otuzbeslik.com, that includes comprehensive information, material, and services about Izmir, a city in Turkey. The company is considered to be one of the most comprehensive initiatives of Izmir in software sector.
After studying Computer Engineering at Bilkent University, Bilsay received his M.S. degree in Software Engineering in San Francisco, USA. After working for a while in USA, he came to Istanbul, and then went to London. In London, he worked in WhoScored.com, one of the most important soccer sites in the world, for the past 9 years.
He started the initiative with three partners in August. In their sites, they plan to give different information and services that is not be found in an ordinary city guide website. It will include information and services about activities, concerts, workshops, places, and people. It will use artificial intelligence (AI) in the backend to give smarter guides and services depending on the preferences and profiles of people. It will be more like a city assistant. A heavy coding and development work is ongoing, and at the moment, there are 8 sub-projects working in 8 different applications and services for the site. Bilsay is responsible from operation management and there is also a content team. They received sponsorship and they plan to receive advertisements as well. Bilsay says that this will be the facebook of Izmir.