[Harp-L] World Harmonica Events : Calendar

[Patrice Rayon <stpat95@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Merry Christmas and a 
Happy Holiday to all...
Joyeux Noël !



The date of this message is just a coincidence, due to my hollidays and having more time.
I propose a world harmonica events calendar, totally free ! The goal being to share, in the same spirit as music !... 

Something did exist by the past...but disapeared... If you read the rest you understand what I propose...



I explain: 

About four years ago I created a calendar of events all around the harmonica for France, Switzerland, Belgium, Monaco. The first reason is that I believe that to encourage the ones who want to organize festivals, any events, concerts, meetings aound the harmonica, what was according to me the central place to federate the attentions was a Calendar available and maintained by someone in the USA ... 



This calendar disapeared, I guess also because of the amount of time necessary to maintain it, get the dates etc...


The french calendar is here, and you can notice it is still well populated, partly parsing bandsintown with a very small script that I wrote (not only with artists from these three coutries): 

http://harmonicacontact.com/Agendas/Francophonie.html


In 2014 I created a Facebook page  "World 
Harmonica Events" ( http://minilien.fr/a0agf1 ), with nothing else on it than giving a short explanation of what I wanted to do... This page is getting everydays people to select the "I like" button. Close to 800 now from all over the world. If some of you who knows about me, met me either in Europe or in the 50th SPAH convention, and my website that I started ten years ago ( http://harmonicacontact.com ). Perhaps they can share about this message. I thought HARP-L was the very best place to tell about it, also because this is the oldest mailing list about harmonica. 


 The
 idea of bringing back a Gig List is serious... as serious as this site I
 made for about ten years... Just think about that "It is not because it
 is difficult that they do not dare to make it, but because they do not 
dare to make it that it is difficult" .... So I do it, and it will be free !!! I have a job without any relation, so no other interest than being proud to help bringing a small stone, to help consolidate what can help events to be better known about.

Just because I am a
 musician, harmonica player, building a network around harmonica... and that I want to 
share !

The only condition to make it work, to get the dates and making all automatic, is that the dates are entered by the artists and organizers of events by themselves (because this is up to them to decide). And the place to enter the date would be their own account on bandstintown. I tried by myself and was able to enter a date for free !!! Informations about bandsintown are here: https://bandsintown.desk.com/ . I have no action with them ;) ...I am french and I believe this tool is from USA.
After I need to be informed about the Artist Name I have to add to the calendar. So today the result is very small, mainly dates from USA, but already some from New Zealand. You can contact me to the adress : contact@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I launch the parsing of bandsintown every day around 20:00 Greenwich time. This consist in removing absolutely all the dates shown into the calendar to create them again, so I don't miss the possible situations. (updates, cancel, creation)

Today the result of the world calendar is here: http://harmonicacontact.com/Agendas/World.html
I can even give you the HTML integration code for the case you want to add the calendar to your own website (for the french calendar some people like Paul Lassey added it). Never mind who does it, you can forget my name even, but please keep in mind contact@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx , and to tell me for your artist name (the one I check to add your dates from bandsintown).

Today I realize that the calendar covering only french areas limited to Europe, receives every day many visits from USA, Russia, Brazil in addition to the covered areas... That means that the doors opened by such calendar are far represent more than only looking for dates to go to the concerts, but also looking after artists etc...

Patrice
http://www.harmonicacontact.com/
PS: Sorry for my english...