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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
beta: Blues Harmonica Gig List @ MBH
beta: Blues Harmonica Gig List @ MBH
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kudzurunner
5212 posts
Jan 03, 2015
6:56 AM
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I'm in the process of developing a fun new tool for this forum. Broadly speaking, it will be a forum-sourced updating of the old Bass Harp International gig list.
It will be a Google Calendar entitled "Blues Harmonica Gig List @ MBH." It is modeled on Joe Filisko's really cool list of live harp shows in Chicago:
http://www.youmissedmonday.com/p/hear-live-harp_08.html
My idea is to expand Joe's list, as it were, to create a comprehensive list of blues harmonica shows around the world.
Here's the calendar description:
"An international listing of upcoming blues harmonica performances--concerts, club dates, jam sessions, workshops, media appearances, and busking--featuring members of the Modern Blues Harmonica forum and their friends."
Since I don't have the time to input everybody's gigs, as Danny did on his old gig list, this has to be a cooperative endeavor.
Here's how we can begin: If you are an MBH forum member and you have harmonica-focused events that fall into any of the categories I've listed in the calendar description, please send me your email address. (My email, as you know, is asgussow at aol dot com.)
Please put "Blues Harmonica Gig List @ MBH" in the header of your email.
I will manually add you to the list of people who are enabled to modify the calendar. Then you will be able to add your gigs/etc. to the calendar. PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME A LIST OF YOUR GIGS. I won't add them. I am enabling YOU to add YOUR gigs.
I'm not particularly agile with Google Calendar, yet. But I think this will work.
If you are one of my guinea pigs for this--and I hope a handful of you who are gigging folk will help me lift this thing off the ground--then you should pay attention to the format for listing gigs.
The TITLE of your event is your name and/or the name of your group. So, for example, I'm naming my gigs "The Blues Doctors with Adam Gussow." That lets somebody search my names and find these gigs, which wouldn't be the case with gigs named just "The Blues Doctors."
For WHERE, please list, in order, the name of the venue, the street address, city and state. Google may autofill the zip code and country. For non-USA gigs, you should certainly include the country, in CAPS.
You absolutely need to include a start time. On specific days, gigs are listed in order of start time. And if the gig has a specific length (i.e., 4 PM to 7 PM), list the end time.
That's it for now. When and if we get this thing up to speed, I'll create a splashy new webpage, post the calendar much as Joe has done with his calendar, and SEO it so that our gigs--YOUR gigs--come up when somebody searches "blues harmonica concerts" and the like.
I look forward to receiving your emails and giving you a chance, whoever you are, to add your gigs to the list.
And if this all turns out to be impossible, impracticable, or manifestly idiotic, turning into an epic fail, please forgive me in advance. It's just a crazy idea that I've got, and I think we can make it work. If it ends up not working, it was still worth trying.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 03, 2015 6:58 AM
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BronzeWailer
1563 posts
Jan 03, 2015
3:04 PM
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Agreed and emailed. Happy to hear that it includes busking performances!!
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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kudzurunner
5213 posts
Jan 04, 2015
10:23 AM
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I've had two responses so far, although I haven't yet gotten an email from BronzeWailer.
And yes: this calendar DOES include busking performances. If you've got a fairly steady busking gig, with a place and a rough time frame in which people can find you, or if you're going to be busking on a specific special day, please make use of this service.
In order to make this work, people who email me and want to add their listings to the calendar will obviously need to have Google Calendar accounts. That's the only way this works.
Interestingly, almost none of the obvious pros--Kim Wilson, Mitch Kashmar, Jason Ricci--have gigs listed on Google Calendar. Joe Filisko, though, is all over it. His gigs are all Chicago-area, and they're anchored by his weekly teaching gig at Old Town. As this thing moves forward, I may decide to simply fold his entire Google Calendar into the MBH listing. But I don't want to do that until we've built up something of our own.
I hope to hear from more of you. This can be great!
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 04, 2015 10:24 AM
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BronzeWailer
1564 posts
Jan 04, 2015
1:37 PM
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D'Oh!
I have a case of man flu so sent email to the wrong address.
Hope I rectified the situation now.
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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kudzurunner
5215 posts
Jan 04, 2015
3:54 PM
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OK, here you go. Here's the absolute ground zero beta version. As of this moment, the only thing on the calendar is three Blues Doctors gigs.
blues harmonica gig list@MBH
The one problem that immediately rears its head is that there's no place-identifier on the "tight" view. (If that makes any sense.) All you get is the name of the act. You can't tell where the gig is located (city, country, etc.) unless you expand each entry.
I think we probably have to accept this. If this calendar actually gets serious buy-in, we might end up with...what? How many harmonica-based gigs take place around the world on a given night? 15? 20? 100? If we're in the 15-20 range, and if most of the gigs are from forum members and pros we've heard of (because after all, if you follow a pro and you want to upload that person's gig list, be my guest.....just email me and I'll add you to the calendar-creator list), then we're probably OK. People who access the calendar will simply open each entry to see whether there's a nearby gig. That could be fun, actually. Everybody likes presents. :)
But if this scales up, we're in trouble.
If there's a Google Calendar expert who knows an easy way of making the city/state/country, or just the full address, display, please let me know. I'm all ears.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 04, 2015 3:57 PM
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kudzurunner
5216 posts
Jan 04, 2015
3:59 PM
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Edited to add: BronzeWailer has added a January gig! Round of applause. This horseless carriage thing is kind of fun.
Edited again to add: BronzeWailer is working a lot in January! I need to find some gigs. Maybe I need to move to Australia.....
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 04, 2015 4:50 PM
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kudzurunner
5217 posts
Jan 05, 2015
5:26 AM
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We are gaining steam here:
blues harmonica gig list @ MBH
But I can't get the addresses (with the countries, crucially) to display in the same way that they display for the handful of us who are actually constructing the calendar.
In order to show the disparity between what is currently displaying and what we're seeing (i.e., what I WANT to display to the public), I've posted a screeshot of what we're seeing in the back-of-the-house. I've posted it at the bottom of the calendar. Please take a look.
If anybody can tell me how to tweak the preferences on the Google Calendar HTML page in order to get the fuller display, please advise!
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nacoran
8193 posts
Jan 05, 2015
5:46 AM
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I imported it into my calendar so it lists on top of my daily planner, and when I hit the agenda button there it displays like it is supposed to, but not back on the webpage. If you add my nacoran hotmail I may be able to troubleshoot it a bit more.
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kudzurunner
5218 posts
Jan 05, 2015
6:28 AM
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Yeah, that's exactly the problem I'm having. I'll add you right now.
Actually, you are already listed--your hotmail address is already there, so you have read/write privileges.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 05, 2015 6:29 AM
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kudzurunner
5222 posts
Jan 05, 2015
6:53 PM
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OK, guys. We have a huge unresolved issue: time zones. Right now, all gigs are displaying in terms of MY time zones, which is Central Standard time in the USA. This means that Australian gigs, for example, are displaying from 2 AM to 5 AM. That sounds like a fun gig, but it also sounds NOT like the gig you're actually playing.
Google claims to have a fix. It can be found on the following page:
the MBH calendar is a mess! Fix it NOW!
Please click the thingie marked "add time zones to events." That should do the trick.
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BronzeWailer
1565 posts
Jan 05, 2015
10:06 PM
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I have set all my own events as Australian Eastern Daylight Savings time. When I open up my calendar in Google, they show up as the correct Oz time. I similarly get the Blues Doctors as playing from 3 AM till 8 AM, which sounds like a highly inconvenient time. I don't know if there is a fix to show the "local" time on the MBH calendar. (Maybe we could put the local start time in the title line, e.g. "The Blues Doctors with Adam Gussow: 8 PM" because we are presumably primarily interested in gigs in our own time zone)?
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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kudzurunner
5223 posts
Jan 06, 2015
4:10 AM
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Your solution is the best so far, BronzeW. I've revised my events to the name--the band name--is followed by a colon and the gig-time:
The Blues Doctors with Adam Gussow: 4 PM - 7 PM
It's not elegant, and the local times up front are still off, but now the relevant info is visible.
I've also clicked into place an element from Google labs called "world clock," which shows the local time right now for each time zone that has contributed gigs so far. But it's only visible when we access the calendar in the back of the house, not on the public view.
Beta version indeed!
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kudzurunner
5224 posts
Jan 06, 2015
4:20 AM
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OK, I've solved it! All that's necessary is for the "name" of each event to include all the relevant info, in the following format:
name of act: venue, city & state, country, start time & end time
Voila! The calendar works.
Mark & Bronze: please edits your entries to read like mine and we WILL be in business.
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BronzeWailer
1566 posts
Jan 06, 2015
1:03 PM
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DONE (I think. Please let me know if I have missed something.)
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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BronzeWailer
1567 posts
Jan 06, 2015
1:15 PM
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I have added DATE because of the time zone difference we are showing up on the MBH calendar as playing the 24th when we are playing the 25th our time etc.
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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kudzurunner
5225 posts
Jan 06, 2015
2:38 PM
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I'm incredibly bummed that the dates of Australian gigs are coming up displaced by a day, at least in some cases. That completely sucks.
My own feeling is that this is the deal-breaker: the thing that makes this Grand Idea not work--at least not yet.
I'm going to email the Google labs people and tell them the problem. I know there's a way of fixing this, which is to let each entry show up in its own local time and date. There MUST be a way to do that.
In the meantime, I think we should put this thing on pause. Y'all are free to talk me back from the ledge, but right now I'm unhappy at where we've ended up.
Thanks, BronzeW for realizing that your gigs were getting misplaced and pointing that out.
We are very much in beta. Maybe theta. Or Cya Lata.
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BronzeWailer
1568 posts
Jan 06, 2015
3:36 PM
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It is/was a worthy idea. Shame but some problems aren't apparent until you actually try to do something. Fingers crossed that Google people will have a fix!
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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LSC
699 posts
Jan 06, 2015
10:10 PM
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Don't know if this will work since I'm in the same time zone as Adam and don't have the time problem but in the top right of Google Calendar there is a settings icon. There you can change countries, times zones, and other things for your calendar. Not sure if the personal calendar get transferred to the MBH calendar or not.
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LSC
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Greg Heumann
2932 posts
Jan 07, 2015
8:45 AM
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Hi, Adam
A really once thing you're doing.
Speaking from past experience - here is another thing to do your best to manage up front. Lots of bands have regular gigs. Perhaps a harp player hosts a jam on Tuesday nights. If your calendar allows the entry of repeating events, within a few years the calendar will be full of repeating events that don't actually happen. If there is any way you can turn OFF the scheduling of automatically repeating events, DO SO! If it is important enough for a musician to list a show, he can list it every time. Let the musician set his OWN reminder to reschedule it manually. That way, when he falls off the face of the earth, moves, gets a new gig, the venue closes, he gets a girlfriend, whatever - you won't have a bunch of non-events in your calendar. Again - this is a very real problem - I can show you blues calendars where it exists.
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/Greg
BlowsMeAway Productions
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rogonzab
640 posts
Jan 07, 2015
1:56 PM
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maybe set the time of the gig in CUT?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time
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Sorry for any misspell, english is not my first language.
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