Suncoast Blues Society Events Calendar

(Or, Where is my show?)

While this message is primarily for our local artists, members may find interest in better understanding how events find their way to the Suncoast Blues Society event calendar SBS Events Calendar, and sometimes into the newsletter.

Being an all-volunteer organization, your board of directors does not have the time to maintain a calendar. Anyway, there is a better option called GoTonight.

GoTonight (GTN) is a wonderful partner with Suncoast Blues Society, and without going deep into the technology details GTN sends SBS a calendar of local blues events which populates the calendar on the website. And from there it’s a manual process to transpose the shows into the newsletter. Time consuming for sure; prone to errors as well. But given the volunteer staff, or lack of, it’s the best that we can do for our members

There are two ways that shows do not make it to the SBS calendar. The most prevalent issue is the shows not making it into GTN. Venues and artists can populate their calendar on GTN – and many do. But not all take advantage of the GTN calendar and GTN relies on some of their own volunteers to fill in many of the gaps.

If you are interested in participating, or need more information on GTN’s features, reach out to GTN at  Contact GTN.

The second issue arises with the cut off time for the calendar load to SBS. To help solve this problem GTN and SBS have agreed to a 1:00 PM cutoff time on Monday’s for shows to be in the calendar. We realize that event bookings can be fluid but to get our newsletter out on time we do need to put a stake in the ground, and if a show does not make the cutoff day and time, it may not make the calendar or newsletter.

SBS members find the event data valuable. We know this because the event page is the one that receives the most visits to the website. However, here is one instance where it really does take a village for all to benefit. If you are interested in helping make the event data complete, and a better experienced for all members, reach out to GTN at the above link, or send an email to volunteer@suncoastblues.org

Scott Morris, President Suncoast Blues Society.