How Conpass works

Sources: where events are announced

Many events never reach a big platform. They live on a ticketing page, a chamber calendar, a community site, a newsletter or a poster. Conpass keeps a registry of these sources for each region and checks them on a schedule that matches how often they change.

• Ticketing and community platformsLocal ticketing sites, community calendars and meetup pages.
• Associations, chambers and institutesWhere sector roundtables and policy dialogues are announced first.
• Trade-fair databases, venues and newsroomsBig annual fairs, venue calendars and event news.
• Feeds and calendarsRSS, Atom and ICS calendar files wherever organisers publish them.

Busy ticket pages are checked every few minutes around a drop. Active sources are checked every few hours, the rest daily or weekly. If a source that usually posts four events a month goes quiet, Conpass flags it instead of assuming a slow month.

Capture: events you find yourself

LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are where many events are announced, and where Conpass never logs in on its servers. Instead, when you spot something, you send it in: pick a post or any part of a page with the browser extension, crop a poster, right-click an image, forward an email or send a link to the Telegram bot.

• Text, images and QR codesConpass reads the text you picked, recognises text in posters and decodes QR codes, which usually lead to the registration page.
• Missing details from linked pagesPublic links in the post (ticket pages, organiser sites) are read for the date, price and deadlines. Links behind a login get a one-tap “open and capture”.
• Confirmation for uncertain detailsA small ticket shows what Conpass understood and where each detail came from. Anything uncertain waits for your confirmation.

The extension only reads what you select, when you select it. Your social-media cookies never leave your browser.

Reading a page: structured data first, AI last

Each page goes down a ladder, and the first step that works wins:

1. Event data built into the pageMany sites embed exact event details (schema.org Event). Free and precise.
2. Calendar and feed filesICS, RSS and documented public APIs.
3. A reader written for that siteSimple rules for sites that publish clean pages without event data.
4. AI, checked against the pageOnly when nothing above can read a page, a small AI model extracts the details from the event text, under daily spending caps. Every date, price, venue and link it returns must appear in the page, or it’s thrown away.
5. A human lookAnything still doubtful waits in a review queue instead of reaching you.

Conpass reads dates written in local scripts and numerals, local currency symbols and phrases like “6 PM” written the way your city writes them.

Merging duplicates and scoring

A single conference can appear on a ticketing site, three social posts, two news stories and the organiser’s own page. Conpass merges them into one event and keeps every sighting, so it always knows where it heard first.

Then it scores five things, each in plain terms:

• RelevanceHow closely it matches one of the goals you wrote.
• AudienceWho’s likely in the room, from the organiser, price, sponsors, speaker seniority and format. Never from attendee lists.
• FeasibilityTravel time, your weekend, overnight stays and visa lead times.
• True costTicket, travel, hotel, meals and the workdays you give up.
• UrgencyHow soon the next deadline closes.

Every score comes with a one-sentence reason. When you skip, attend or rate events, the ranking uses that as feedback.

Tracking deadlines

Every event carries a state: announced, call for speakers open, tickets announced, tickets live, early bird ending, sold out, registration closed. Each state arms a different watch.

• Ticket dropsWhen a page says “tickets go live at 9 PM”, Conpass watches that page closely from two hours before and is built to alert you within minutes of a change.
• The reminder ladder14, 7, 3 and 1 days before each deadline, then 2 hours before.
• A daily capThree alerts a day at most, with quiet hours. Ticket releases and ticket pages you watch are exempt from the cap.