1/1/11: Moving to online payment

Happy New Year!

We look forward to providing more features, cities, and places to post events in 2011, and hope all your events turn out great!

In 2011 we are moving to accepting online payment only, through PayPal. Until now, we have been accepting paper checks from almost anyone who requests an invoice, and sending event listings before we receive their checks. The whole process of paper checks is very time-consuming, and there is a greater chance of human error on everyone’s part. When everything goes right, we pick up checks, manually match and post payments, and deposit checks. But we often have to figure out how to apply checks without enough identification, deal with duplicate payments, track down non-responsive customers and write off losses, figure out discrepancies, and communicate with customers who have forgotten they requested an invoice or requested one inadvertently. Since online payment applies the payment to the right event instantly, we can use the time this frees up to publicize events, not on paperwork.

We use PayPal to process payments. You do not need a PayPal account to use a credit card. By using PayPal, we don’t ever see your credit card information; you pay on the PayPal site, not the FullCalendar site.

If you want to pay using your bank account or cash, you’ll need a PayPal account. There is a relatively new way to add funds to your PayPal account using cash: MoneyPak ®, which you buy in person at a retailer, then log into your PayPal account to access it. More info: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=xpt/Marketing/demo/additionalpayment/GreenDot-outside

We only accept payments online, not by phone, sorry.

You will receive a receipt from both PayPal and FullCalendar, each identifying the event (by ID and/or title), to make any reconciliation easy.

We will be looking at alternate online payment methods for extra choices, such as Checkout by Amazon and Google Checkout. If you have suggestions or requests, please let us know at support@fullcalendar.com .

Exception: Any new customers who plan to submit 5 or more events each month and would like to request credit so they can pay by check can email us at support@fullcalendar.com . We still prefer online payment but will try to be flexible for more frequent customers whom we can easily contact and who remit payment consistently on time.

Please let us know if you have any questions. We look forward to providing better service more efficiently with this change.

And again, Happy New Year and best wishes for a terrific 2011!

11/4/10: New directory of performing arts venues and facilities in the greater Bay Area

Dancers’ Group, Theatre Bay Area, and Fractured Atlas have created a new resource for performing arts in the SF Bay Area: http://bayareaspaces.org/.

From the site:

Bay Area Performing Arts Spaces is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, searchable database of performing arts venues and facilities in the greater Bay Area for classes, workshops, auditions, rehearsals and even performances.

Whether you’re looking for a space to rent or looking to rent your space, Bay Area Performing Arts Spaces is your solution. What’s more, it’s free to search and free to list!

A quick browse shows the site has lots of traditional theaters, but also churches, community centers, even a venue at Childrens Fairyland in Oakland!

The site’s public launch date is November 15th – check it out!

9/25: Expo for Independent Arts

Come check out the 11th Annual Expo for Independent Arts, Saturday, Sept 25th, at CELLspace in SF!

11th Annual Expo for Independent Arts

Exhibitors are looking for all types of artists:

  • magazines and journals looking for contributors
  • literature/visual arts publishers looking for authors
  • film and music festivals looking for submissions
  • dance and performance venues looking for acts and companies
  • arts services designed to help independent artists succeed

    • Also, lots of related workshops this week: Independent Publishing, Promoting Underground Art, Social Networking, Fundraising, and Face Time with the SF Arts Commission.

    This is a unique annual event that just keeps getting better and better. Don’t miss it!

    8/3/10, Theatre Bay Area

    Theatre Bay Area provides many services to the dance and comedy community, as well as theatre companies. Besides running event listings for free for their members, they offer ticket discounts, ticketing services (including selling half-price tickets day of the show), access to insurance and other business services, discounts for advertising, and act as a clearinghouse for theatre jobs and auditions. There are memberships for individuals and organizations. If you’re interested in the performing arts or working in these fields, check out Theatre Bay Area.

    4/15/10: For galleries: new ad opportunities on ArtSlant

    ArtSlant, a website featuring visual art, artists, galleries, shows, and related events, has created a new advertising opportunity for galleries, next to their Arts Calendar. Artslant covers art in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, and overseas.

    For more information:

    On the latest offering

    General info on advertising on ArtSlant

    Aarrr!! Another outage, 8/19/09

    Unfortunately, it’s not yet Talk Like a Pirate Day, we just had another major outage. Our servers at our hosting company were hit by a power outage, and were down today for about 6 hours; also for a couple hours late last night. Our database was partially lost and could not be repaired (believe me, I insisted on talking to anyone who might possibly have a way to do this).

    We are now using a copy of the database made last night at 7pm, so any information that you entered between now and then is not available. We do have all emails we’ve received and copies of what was sent, and can reconstruct the basics: payments made and events committed. We will contact personally anyone we know whose paid event is no longer there (fortunately, a small number).

    If you entered draft events, or made changes to your organization or venue entries, after 7pm last night, our apologies – that information will need to be re-entered.

    If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at support@fullcalendar.com .

    FullCalendar outage, 7/26/09

    Our apologies for the lengthy outage Sunday night, July 26. Our hosting company had an unexpected problem with the database holding our data, and it took several hours to get back online. We have restored a copy of the database from Friday night, and have notified most of our affected customers; certainly the ones with paid event submissions that were not recovered. However, there were some draft submissions that were not recovered, and for which we have no information, plus there may have been some new accounts or other information changes that were not recovered. Our apologies for the inconvenience. If there’s anything we can do to make it up to you, please email us at support@fullcalendar.com
    -Nancy Tubbs, FullCalendar

    SF: FullCalendar at BiztechDay Sat, 10/25/08

    BiztechDay is a full day of tips and advice for using social media and the web to market yourself and your business. It kicks off with Tim Ferriss, the 4-hour Work Week author, and ends with Scott Heiferman, the founder of Meetup. Just after lunch, George Wright, the VP Marketing of Blendtec, is speaking – the company that did the viral Will it Blend? videos. Lots of interesting and practical panels inbetween.

    If you go, come say hi – I’ll be on the Event Marketing Panel at 3pm.