The Marlborough District Council’s new online events calendar Follow-ME is up and running, with more than 60 events loaded.
Council events co-ordinator Susie Witehira said yesterday the site listed all events, both free and commercial ones.
So far, feedback had been good, she said.
“I’ve been getting in touch with all the event managers and people I know who have events on and getting them to load them onto the site. It’s another tool for event managers to get people to attend.”
As well as listing events, people can also sign up for email updates and use a widget to put on their own websites so events were listed automatically, rather than people trying to keep on top of events to list on their websites.
Witehira managed the calendar, which was hosted on the Destination Marlborough website but with its own independent identity and profile.
“Our aim is to see Follow-ME become the ‘go to’ place for everyone looking for information about Marlborough; it promotes the region to the outside, it shows what’s on and also has all the information about actually getting here and what to do here.
“The website is visually very attractive but also incredibly accessible; we’ve made it very easy to quickly find the kind of information that people actually want.”
The calendar was designed to be the central information base for event planners and the public, with sections on transport and accommodation as well as events, Witehira said.
The website also linked event planners to Marlborough’s Event Toolkit, a guide to creating and running successful events.
Marlborough Mayor Alistair Sowman said the event calendar was one of the key elements in the council’s Regional Events Strategy which aimed to encourage a wide range of events for Marlborough, spread over the calendar year.
“It’s going to be useful to be able to access this long-range calendar and I hope it’s going to enable event organisers to make good decisions,” he said.
– The Marlborough Express
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