If you're following the Norristown Project, you are aware that we sponsor our own community calendar free to the community. This calendar can become a powerful weapon to boosting tourism as well as planning for your next event. This blog will be a refresher to most of you and an instructions manual to the rest.
The first point I would like to make about our calendar is that it is FREE and managed through volunteer efforts. It's not funded by taxpayers or through donations. The cost to maintain this site is $0 and requires about 2 hours per week to keep it fresh(adding new events).
We make it easy for anyone to submit events through Google forms. All that is required by you or the business is to place the event details in the calendar and it will be published within 24-48 hours depending on volume. Before you submit an event, please use spell check and make sure all your details are correct. This is important because when it is complete, I copy/paste the details in the calendar without checking your spelling. Sorry, I went to school for Finance and my grammar is probably worse than anyone I know. The only details I check is if the event happens within Norristown's borders.
That's right, the only events you will ever see on our calendar happen in Norristown only. For it to serve its purpose, these events must happen in Norristown and support those businesses/organizations who are keeping the community active. We understand that there are not enough venues for all events in Norristown, however, we give no exceptions to this rule(we will talk about this in a future post). To add an event to our calendar, click here and fill out the form at the bottom of the calendar.
Please make sure you are using the Google form to make sure your event shows up on our calendar. In the earlier stages of the calendar, I would spend 8-16 hours a week browsing all social media, emails and event pages for events happening in Norristown. Last year, that was easier to do. If you are an event organizer, please make sure you use our form. I receive a notification once a day if an event has been added and it goes up that next morning. By the time I go online to search for any missing events, it may already be too late!
Now for a crash course for the viewer/resident. The community calendar can be viewed several ways. The first is on it's home site here. We also have a link at the top of this site that will lead you to the community calendar site. The community calendar is also embedded on our Facebook page. Search 'The Norristown Project' on Facebook, like us, and click the 'Community Calendar' tab on the page.
The events are marked by category. There is also a drop down arrow at the top right of the calendar where you can sort the categories to only show the categories you are looking for. By default the calendar is shown in a monthly view, however, you can change it to your favorite view. The calendar also has a feature where you can subscribe to the calendar and receive all the events on your phone/tablet. That's it!
So that is our community calendar in a nutshell. We try to make it as convenient as possible. We would like to remind you our calendar is a volunteer effort! Help on this calendar is always appreciated whether you're a resident or represent a business/organization. If you know of an event that does not appear on our calendar but you would like to share and recommend the event with our viewers, simply use the Google form on the page and we would be more than happy to include this event! TNP is proud of our community calendar and hope you have benefited from using this resource.
Email sashe@montcooic.org for any suggestions for the calendar or add a comment to this blog below.
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