How to know what’s happening in the city

I am already three weeks here in Calgary with the Ente and we have been to a concert in an alternative music pub, an independent short film festival, a ralley promoting Canada’s commitment to Kyoto, a self-organized cafe and book store … There are several ways to get to know what is happening in the city. This is a quick run down of a few approaches towards pastime fulfillment, which can be applied to any city.

Peers

At first, there are your immediate contemporaries in the contexts where you’re living and working. In our case, this constitutes the friendly iLab and Ente’s flatmates. This way you usually also have a crowd of potential people accompanying you to a place/event.

Local press/media

Then you can consult local news papers covering cultural events. Here in Calgary the most authoritative ones are FFW (standing for fast forward, be aware bad website) and BeatRoute. Furthermore there are those poster walls in special areas (e.g. Kensington and 17th Avenue) advertising concerts, theater plays, movie screenings and much more.

The interwebs

And of course you can also consult the Internet near you. There are several Web sites covering regular meetings (Meetup) and all sorts of events (Upcoming, Eventful). All these sites offer an RSS feed and an iCal link to subscribe future events either using a feed reader or a calendar application. Of course, the ideal way would be a decentralized* approach. Here comes the microformat hCalendar into play, which can than be accessed by a search engine (of your choice some day).

Got any other options, dear reader? Please add them as a comment.

* Did i mention that decentralization really rocks? Well, i think i did.