NEEDLE SEARCH
Open deck night signups and event platform for a Chicago DJ collective
TL;DR
A web platform for Needle Search, a Chicago DJ collective, to post monthly open deck nights and let local DJs sign up for slots — my first project built for someone else, and a crash course in scoping.
OVERVIEW
Needle Search is a Chicago DJ collective started by friends who met at an open deck night. Their thing: rent out a bar monthly, give local DJs 30-minute slots to come play, keep it social and low-key. They wanted a website to handle all of it — event listings, slot signups, and more.
THE PROBLEM
The initial vision was ambitious: accounts, follows, social features, priority access for engaged users, commenting, the works. Essentially a social platform built around open deck nights. This shaped the early stack decisions — React for a highly interactive frontend, Supabase for the database, auth, and edge functions all bundled in one generous free tier without needing to stand up a custom server.
As development progressed, it became clear the scope was getting ahead of the actual goal. Requiring account creation just to sign up for an open deck night was a lot of friction for an event being promoted through Instagram links. People were going to tap a link in an IG story and expect to sign up in thirty seconds — making them create an account first would kill that. After some back and forth we agreed to pare it way back and focus on what people actually came to the site to do.
THE SOLUTION
The site ended up as an event listing and signup platform. The organizer adds a new open deck event by inserting a row into the database — no CMS needed, since they were comfortable enough working directly in Supabase's UI. Each event has a rich text description field so they can format it however they want rather than being locked into a template, plus Google Calendar and iCal links. When an event closes, the signup form disappears automatically.
Signups write directly to the database, which meant I could set up pre-made queries in Supabase so the organizer could pull up a clean list of who signed up for a given event, browse their Instagram profiles, and make decisions from there. Everything updates in real time — no redeployment needed when an event changes.
OUTCOME
The site ran for about 6 months and hosted 4 events, each with 30+ signups. Eventually Needle Search moved to Google Forms linked from their Instagram posts, and the site went quiet — it's still live, just unused. Looking back, a simpler stack would have been the smarter call. But this project was where I learned React, TypeScript, and responsive design for the first time. More than that, having to make real decisions for real people — scope, architecture, user experience — made me more confident doing the same thing at work. It pushed me toward roles that involved more client interaction, more ownership, and more of a say in how things got built.