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Somewhat related note: as someone living in a major city I find it increasingly hard to discover relevant events happening soon/around me. Events I'm looking f

Somewhat related note: as someone living in a major city I find it increasingly hard to discover relevant events happening soon/around me. Events I'm looking for span a range of interests, artists, bands, topics, hobbies, and causes - hence no one central location has a list of everything relevant to me. So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, individual web pages, AXS, Spotify Concerts, email newsletters, etc. Building another event organization platform isn't the solution - getting people, venues, and organizers onto it would be an expensive uphill battle, and would further fracture discovery. But a thought of a decentralized open-source aggregation of a bunch of feeds has been popping up in my mind lately. These could be sourced from all of the above mentioned sources and somewhat standardized into a format with name, description, price, location, time. From there, it should be a simple matter to add filtering, subscriptions, and even a recommendations engine. Has anything like this been attempted? Might it work? I haven't found anything yet.

pera 7y ago
Yeah, I was thinking about this too: why not try to implement the "Who is hiring" model (i.e. a quasi-standarized text format) to events using social networks that allows to search by tags, such as Twitter and Mastodon.
jborichevskiy 7y ago
Mobilizon looks like it's on the right track but my biggest concern is seeding it: the first version of any such aggregator should pull from existing repositories of events to allow discovery (while still forwarding actual registration to the original source site). I do like the fact that they have an event-publishing tool and the option to self-host. > Framasoft wants to create Mobilizon: free/libre software that will allow communities to create their own spaces to publish events, in order to better emancipate themselves from tech giants. We want to develop a digital common, that everyone can make their own, which respects privacy and activism by design. https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jarofgreen 7y ago
  I was never sure if Mobilizon was in this space - there is a difference between a system that lets an event organiser host events and one that lets keen people aggregate events from other places that aren't Mobilizon installs. Do we know more about their plans yet?
- delfinom 7y ago
  https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
vorpalhex 7y ago
The Austin, Texas area has a website that does something like this: https://do512.com/ https://do512.com/ Obviously this kind of thing only works for events likely to get general attention.
- diminoten 7y ago
  Northwest Arkansas has https://leisurlist.com/ https://leisurlist.com/
iamspoilt 7y ago
That’s the first thing I thought after going through the linked article. We strongly need some aggregating tool for all events happening around a particular location.
- davidy123 7y ago
  No, and looking for tools (or Portals as they are groaningly called) is where the Web went wrong. We need strongly aggregatable data, not a tool. In fact this data format already exists in schema.org, which is an open, community-driven effort by Google, Bing, Yandex and others. https://schema.org/Event https://schema.org/Event schema.org is used by about a third of web sites to allow them to be self contained but make their information discoverable and reusable in a precise way, and it is the skeleton of the much-promised semantic web. The main factors working against it are Facebook and Amazon, who have enough mass and selfishness to want to be self-contained worlds. That is the only reasonable way to "decentralize" this data so anyone can use it. Add your recognized sites once (or perhaps have a recurring crawl) and anyone can have their own feed of events, just like RSS. It's just that developers and startups don't like the boring work of following standards, they'd rather build a tool. [edited to add details about schema.org]
  - sitkack 7y ago
    It is called RSS with microformats and this is exactly where the web was in what, 2003/5? Part of censuring Big Tech should be forcing them to adopt open standards, XMPP, RSS, Microformats, etc. http://microformats.org/wiki/RSS http://microformats.org/wiki/RSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat
    - greggman2 7y ago
      > Schema.org vocabularies are developed by an open community process, using the public-schemaorg@w3.org mailing list and through GitHub.
  - greggman2 7y ago
    It would be great to have all this data but... It's not sufficient because anyone can post anything so it becomes a magnet for scammers. One, they'll make up events for non-events like just listing their bar exists. They'll also fill out fake schemas just for SEO, example fill out an event "Viagra cheap!" Of course I guess that's no different than crawling the web. Just saying that even with the data itself you need some serious spam detection to make it useful.
deleted 7y ago
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deleted 7y ago
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DoreenMichele 7y ago
So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, individual web pages, AXS, Spotify Concerts, email newsletters, etc. I'm in a small town and it feels like "word of mouth" is the standard here. I'm wondering where one would even begin to try to aggregate any information whatsoever.
- bradlys 7y ago
  For even small communities within a large city, word of mouth is still huge. Very few people show up to the events I go to because they found it online. It's 95%+ word of mouth. ("oh yeah, my friend Bob told me about it") It's no different for me. I rarely go to events I've seen only online. I also use word of mouth as a source. I'm going to an event this weekend because a coworker broadcasted they're speaking at it. I won't be able to see their talk due to a prior commitment but I'm going to see plenty of others thanks to knowing about it.
- dTal 7y ago
  Hmm... wordofmouth.com ?
Cshelton 7y ago
I'm actually building something right now. I'm building it because it is a problem I've faced among my friends and well.. the "millennial" generation to begin with. I'm building it first to be used among myself and friends. I don't want to say too much because to me the solution seems so obvious and I'd like to have something out there and tried on a small scale first, but... the key is not to focus on events directly, but people. If anyone would like to know more, my twitter is on my profile, DM me there! Right now it is just me. I'm also currently torn on focusing on the consumer social space (not social network) or the business space. Both seem pretty promising targets but vastly different approaches to marketing.
- jborichevskiy 7y ago
  I'd love to know more - your profile seems to be missing your email though (the main email in your HN profile is default private; you have to add it to the About section to be visible).
  - Cshelton 7y ago
    Oh, thanks for letting me know! I'll add it there.
- narak 7y ago
  Am interested in learning more but your contact info is twitter without DMs open (have to be mutually following). Mind opening DMs or posting your email to the about field on HN? Thanks!
  - Cshelton 7y ago
    Just opened it!
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  Let's talk, i'm building one too. But with some different use-cases probably. Nico at Sapico dot me I have a marketing plan ready which is dublicateable for every city. Belgium and Netherlands is reserved for me ;)
kolbe 7y ago
Checking one of those boxes: a friend of mine made an app called MicChek (iOS only) that will tell aggregate the events going on for a certain date. It's actually useful when you find yourself with a free night, especially in a strange city.
tacon 7y ago
>Has anything like this been attempted? Might it work? It has been tried, and early attempts failed. Jon Udell was one of the drivers behind the Elm City Project, which merged many RSS feeds of calendar information into a uniform resource. [0] Maybe its time has come again. [0] https://blog.jonudell.net/elmcity-project-faq/ https://blog.jonudell.net/elmcity-project-faq/
- jborichevskiy 7y ago
  Wow, this looks very thorough. A shame it didn't take off. Thank you for linking!
mikestaub 7y ago
I'm building peapods.com to solve this exact problem. Beta is launching soon!
caseysoftware 7y ago
I've been aggregating data from Meetup and many other sources for years: http://techeventsnetwork.com/cities/ http://techeventsnetwork.com/cities/ and then pipe it into city-specific Twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware/lists/tech-events-network/members https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware/lists/tech-events-network/... It's only tech events in the US but a fairly exhaustive list. I've played with a recommendation engine but haven't fully baked it into the systems yet.
- jarofgreen 7y ago
  Hello from https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/ https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/ :-) We import a lot of our listings from meetup.com and ical/ics.
3dprintscanner 7y ago
One site that I've found with a wide-ish breadth of events is https://evensi.com https://evensi.com. They however seem to have too much choice and it's difficult to narrow down to a small relevant list of events. There sometimes are too many options that are vaguely interesting but too few that are genuinely engaging. Meetup works quite well in this respect as you can select your interests and it's not too difficult to scan the entire list if that doesn't offer a decent choice and it's certainly something Eventbrite lacks even though they have vast inventory (It's better designed for ticketing rather than discovery). I've tried to crack this and have put together a site to recommend you 5 interesting events each day over the next week. (Also all free entry with some food and or drink). Currently in fairly early stages and covers London. https://onlythebestevents.com https://onlythebestevents.com
otterley 7y ago
It’s definitely been attempted in the past. For example, there was Upcoming.org, launched in 2003, acquired by Yahoo!, retired 10 years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcoming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcoming

pera 7y ago

Yeah, I was thinking about this too: why not try to implement the "Who is hiring" model (i.e. a quasi-standarized text format) to events using social networks that allows to search by tags, such as Twitter and Mastodon.

jborichevskiy 7y ago

Mobilizon looks like it's on the right track but my biggest concern is seeding it: the first version of any such aggregator should pull from existing repositories of events to allow discovery (while still forwarding actual registration to the original source site). I do like the fact that they have an event-publishing tool and the option to self-host. > Framasoft wants to create Mobilizon: free/libre software that will allow communities to create their own spaces to publish events, in order to better emancipate themselves from tech giants. We want to develop a digital common, that everyone can make their own, which respects privacy and activism by design. https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jarofgreen 7y ago
I was never sure if Mobilizon was in this space - there is a difference between a system that lets an event organiser host events and one that lets keen people aggregate events from other places that aren't Mobilizon installs. Do we know more about their plans yet?
delfinom 7y ago
https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

vorpalhex 7y ago

The Austin, Texas area has a website that does something like this: https://do512.com/ https://do512.com/ Obviously this kind of thing only works for events likely to get general attention.

diminoten 7y ago
Northwest Arkansas has https://leisurlist.com/ https://leisurlist.com/

iamspoilt 7y ago

That’s the first thing I thought after going through the linked article. We strongly need some aggregating tool for all events happening around a particular location.

davidy123 7y ago
No, and looking for tools (or Portals as they are groaningly called) is where the Web went wrong. We need strongly aggregatable data, not a tool. In fact this data format already exists in schema.org, which is an open, community-driven effort by Google, Bing, Yandex and others. https://schema.org/Event https://schema.org/Event schema.org is used by about a third of web sites to allow them to be self contained but make their information discoverable and reusable in a precise way, and it is the skeleton of the much-promised semantic web. The main factors working against it are Facebook and Amazon, who have enough mass and selfishness to want to be self-contained worlds. That is the only reasonable way to "decentralize" this data so anyone can use it. Add your recognized sites once (or perhaps have a recurring crawl) and anyone can have their own feed of events, just like RSS. It's just that developers and startups don't like the boring work of following standards, they'd rather build a tool. [edited to add details about schema.org]
- sitkack 7y ago
  It is called RSS with microformats and this is exactly where the web was in what, 2003/5? Part of censuring Big Tech should be forcing them to adopt open standards, XMPP, RSS, Microformats, etc. http://microformats.org/wiki/RSS http://microformats.org/wiki/RSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat
  - greggman2 7y ago
    > Schema.org vocabularies are developed by an open community process, using the public-schemaorg@w3.org mailing list and through GitHub.
- greggman2 7y ago
  It would be great to have all this data but... It's not sufficient because anyone can post anything so it becomes a magnet for scammers. One, they'll make up events for non-events like just listing their bar exists. They'll also fill out fake schemas just for SEO, example fill out an event "Viagra cheap!" Of course I guess that's no different than crawling the web. Just saying that even with the data itself you need some serious spam detection to make it useful.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DoreenMichele 7y ago

So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, individual web pages, AXS, Spotify Concerts, email newsletters, etc. I'm in a small town and it feels like "word of mouth" is the standard here. I'm wondering where one would even begin to try to aggregate any information whatsoever.

bradlys 7y ago
For even small communities within a large city, word of mouth is still huge. Very few people show up to the events I go to because they found it online. It's 95%+ word of mouth. ("oh yeah, my friend Bob told me about it") It's no different for me. I rarely go to events I've seen only online. I also use word of mouth as a source. I'm going to an event this weekend because a coworker broadcasted they're speaking at it. I won't be able to see their talk due to a prior commitment but I'm going to see plenty of others thanks to knowing about it.
dTal 7y ago
Hmm... wordofmouth.com ?

Cshelton 7y ago

I'm actually building something right now. I'm building it because it is a problem I've faced among my friends and well.. the "millennial" generation to begin with. I'm building it first to be used among myself and friends. I don't want to say too much because to me the solution seems so obvious and I'd like to have something out there and tried on a small scale first, but... the key is not to focus on events directly, but people. If anyone would like to know more, my twitter is on my profile, DM me there! Right now it is just me. I'm also currently torn on focusing on the consumer social space (not social network) or the business space. Both seem pretty promising targets but vastly different approaches to marketing.

jborichevskiy 7y ago
I'd love to know more - your profile seems to be missing your email though (the main email in your HN profile is default private; you have to add it to the About section to be visible).
- Cshelton 7y ago
  Oh, thanks for letting me know! I'll add it there.
narak 7y ago
Am interested in learning more but your contact info is twitter without DMs open (have to be mutually following). Mind opening DMs or posting your email to the about field on HN? Thanks!
- Cshelton 7y ago
  Just opened it!
NicoJuicy 7y ago
Let's talk, i'm building one too. But with some different use-cases probably. Nico at Sapico dot me I have a marketing plan ready which is dublicateable for every city. Belgium and Netherlands is reserved for me ;)

kolbe 7y ago

Checking one of those boxes: a friend of mine made an app called MicChek (iOS only) that will tell aggregate the events going on for a certain date. It's actually useful when you find yourself with a free night, especially in a strange city.

tacon 7y ago

>Has anything like this been attempted? Might it work? It has been tried, and early attempts failed. Jon Udell was one of the drivers behind the Elm City Project, which merged many RSS feeds of calendar information into a uniform resource. [0] Maybe its time has come again. [0] https://blog.jonudell.net/elmcity-project-faq/ https://blog.jonudell.net/elmcity-project-faq/

jborichevskiy 7y ago
Wow, this looks very thorough. A shame it didn't take off. Thank you for linking!

mikestaub 7y ago

I'm building peapods.com to solve this exact problem. Beta is launching soon!

caseysoftware 7y ago

I've been aggregating data from Meetup and many other sources for years: http://techeventsnetwork.com/cities/ http://techeventsnetwork.com/cities/ and then pipe it into city-specific Twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware/lists/tech-events-network/members https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware/lists/tech-events-network/... It's only tech events in the US but a fairly exhaustive list. I've played with a recommendation engine but haven't fully baked it into the systems yet.

jarofgreen 7y ago
Hello from https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/ https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/ :-) We import a lot of our listings from meetup.com and ical/ics.

3dprintscanner 7y ago

One site that I've found with a wide-ish breadth of events is https://evensi.com https://evensi.com. They however seem to have too much choice and it's difficult to narrow down to a small relevant list of events. There sometimes are too many options that are vaguely interesting but too few that are genuinely engaging. Meetup works quite well in this respect as you can select your interests and it's not too difficult to scan the entire list if that doesn't offer a decent choice and it's certainly something Eventbrite lacks even though they have vast inventory (It's better designed for ticketing rather than discovery). I've tried to crack this and have put together a site to recommend you 5 interesting events each day over the next week. (Also all free entry with some food and or drink). Currently in fairly early stages and covers London. https://onlythebestevents.com https://onlythebestevents.com

otterley 7y ago

It’s definitely been attempted in the past. For example, there was Upcoming.org, launched in 2003, acquired by Yahoo!, retired 10 years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcoming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcoming