Planner tools

1. Sign in

   With your free account (see Your free account).

2. Open the plans page and choose Switch on the planner tools

   On the plans page. The free date check and your account page link there too.

3. Use them

   Open Planner tools any time from your account page. The menu at the top shows every tool.

Every scored tool uses the same score for a day in a city. The higher it is, the more stands in your way. It adds up:

• Other events that day, weighted by their size, how close their topics and audience are to yours, and how near they are: an event in your city counts most, then your state, then virtual events, then other states.
• Public holidays, which count heavily, and the Friday before or Tuesday after a long weekend.
• School holidays in your state.
• Other planners’ holds on that date. You only ever learn how many, never who.

Each day is rated Low, Medium or High risk, and every score comes with its reasons, so you can judge for yourself. The weights are tuned as more events are listed.

Choose a city, a window of up to 200 days, your event’s topics and your audience, then choose Score these dates. You get:

• How many days were checked, and how many are high and low risk.
• Risk by day, month by month.
• Days to watch, worst first, each with the reasons behind its score.

The page address holds your choices, so you can bookmark or share a result.

Already have two to four dates in mind? Enter them with your city, topics and audience. Each is scored side by side, with the lowest-risk one called out and the reasons for each, plus a link to see that day on the calendar.

1. Describe the event

   City, topics, audience, how many days it runs (1 to 5), and the days of the week it can run on (Tuesday to Thursday to start with).

2. Set the window

   Up to 200 days. Public holidays are left out unless you allow them.

3. Find dates

   We score every possible start date and show the five quietest options that do not overlap, with what counts against each.

4. Hold these dates

   One click turns an option into a private hold.

Pencil in dates while you confirm a venue. Holds are private: other planners see only that a date is Contested, never who holds it. You see the same label when someone else holds an overlapping date in your city. Add a hold with a city, first and last day and a note, or from the date finder. Release it when you are done.

Tell us a date you care about, a city, how far either side to watch (one day to two weeks) and, if you like, which topics. Once a day we check, and email you if an event near your date in that city is listed, changed or cancelled.

If another event clashes with yours, ask its organiser a question through us.

• Only organisers who agreed to be contacted are shown, for events in the next 30 or 60 days.
• Neither side sees the other’s email address. The organiser gets your message by email and can reply or decline from a private page, with no account.
• Replies appear on the page and in your inbox. Up to ten messages a day.

• Saved views: name a city, topic and format you check often and open it on the calendar in one click.
• Team: add up to 25 colleagues by email and choose which views to share. They see shared views on their account page.
• Download events: a spreadsheet (CSV) of events for a city, topic and dates, up to 400 days and 5,000 events, ready for a client or a board paper.

Taking an event to two to five cities? Set the window (up to 180 days), the shortest and longest gap between stops, and the weekdays it can run on. We try every order of the cities and show the three runs with the least in their way.

• Topic report: what is scheduled on each topic in the next 90 days, what was listed in the last 30, and the same 90 days last year.
• Venues: where tech events have been held in a city, how often, the largest size each has hosted, and when last.
• Heat table: events per city, month by month, for the next 12 months.

Read the calendar from your own scripts, dashboards or spreadsheets.

1. Create a key

   On the API page, name the key and copy it. It is shown once. You can have five, and revoke any of them.

2. Call the events endpoint

   Send GET /api/v1/events with the header Authorization: Bearer <your key>. Filter with city, topic, format, from and to (up to 400 days apart).

Up to 120 requests a minute, and up to 500 events per request. Each event has its title, summary, times and zone, city, format, venue, organiser, topics, size, status and link.

The free date check is a good place to start without a plan.