Most everyone in Toledo knows that it can sometimes seem like there is nothing going on in town but often what is the problem is that the promoters/organizers have not done a good enough job of getting the word out.
I like to look up and report about events that are going on around Toledo which is why I started this blog in the first place. I've been mulling over how people learn about and find events going on in town. I know from first hand that it is very difficult to find out what is going on. There are a lot of people who post on their organization's website but that is as far as they get which to the uninitiated is too difficult to find.
There are quite a few sites out there that try to put things together. Eventful, Eventsetter, Craigslist, various local solutions, Toledo.com, dotoledo.org . No product is perfect and some of these products fill a void that others don't but Out of all of them I think that due to the social aspect of the site my vote is with Upcoming.
With Upcoming you can post an event and make it public or private (telling only some of your friends). I believe you can make the location of the event public or private. You can create groups which are moderatable for those of you involved in churches, clubs, governments, classes, families, major public events, whatever.
For those of us who are interested enough you can develop a program that uses it API. Some people already have. You can put an Upcoming badge on your website, blog, myspace page. There is a Facebook application that you can hook your account up to notify the people closest to you about events.
The main problem is that there just aren't that many current active posting users. There are currently some interesting events that the library, zoo and some local bands have posted but I think that there need to be more posters on this site to make it more effective. I'm going to start posting event that I find around town. Initially I'll probably start with only the ones that I find interesting but who knows. This site is wholely user generated content so it is up to us to fill it.
Check me out on Upcoming.yahoo.com http://upcoming.yahoo.com/user/185306/ my username is Laser... yeah I know it is kind of lame but so what maybe I'll change it sometime but I kind of like it.
If you feel like joining the fun start posting your events and maybe people will start to realize that there really are things going on in Toledo.
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2 comments:
I fully agree; Upcoming is terrific, in my opinion, because of the API. I'm using it to pull event data in to ToledoMenu.com. I still have some ironing to do with the presentation, but using Yahoo's APIs are generally dead simple - I had my current implementation up and running in about an hour.
I really want to write some sort of mobile app for posting events. I haven't decided on a platform yet. There are really only a few apps in their gallery.
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