# Event Scouting

> Find and prioritize events — conferences, summits, invite-only gatherings — worth attending for a stated goal (partnerships, sales, hiring, fundraising, market intel). Does both discovery (what exists) and selection (where the right people actually show up), producing a tiered spreadsheet + a paste-ready summary. Triggers on "what events should we attend", "event scan", "conferences in {city}", or a period/trip window.

- Skill: `lucasksjang/event-scouting` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add lucasksjang/event-scouting`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/lucasksjang/event-scouting/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Product & Planning
- Author: LucasKSJang (https://skillmd.com/u/lucasksjang)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/lucasksjang/event-scouting

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# Event Scouting — discovery + tiering

Do BOTH discovery (what exists) and selection (where the target audience actually shows up),
producing a tiered spreadsheet + a short summary, and accumulating evaluations in a knowledge
base so each run starts ahead of the last.

Core asymmetry to respect: public calendars skew toward large retail/developer events; the
valuable small, closed gatherings barely surface in web search. **Low web presence is not low
value — often the opposite.**

## Two modes (auto-detect; ask only if genuinely ambiguous)
1. **Period scan** — a period is given ("Q4", "September"). Default geography = major hubs; narrow
   if a region is given. Frame results event-first: "this week in this city = this density."
2. **Trip mode** — a city + date window is given. Parse fuzzy windows ("early / mid / late month")
   and state the assumed window. Cover the window AND flag near-miss events within ±3 days
   ("extend the stay one day to catch X"). Never silently widen the window — mark each event
   in/out and flag near-misses explicitly.

## Workflow
1. **Scope** — detect mode, period/region/window, and the goal (which shapes tiering weight, not
   the sweep). Don't block on non-essential questions: state assumptions, proceed, append open
   questions at the end.
2. **Load the knowledge base first** — reuse recent evaluations; re-verify only this year's
   dates/venue for known events. Create a KB entry for anything new.
3. **Discovery fan-out** — parallel searches, one per event category × region, so no single
   category crowds out the others. Also sweep aggregators, invite-only side events around anchor
   conferences (this layer is often the primary target, not a follow-up), and non-conference
   clusters overlapping the window.
4. **Check internal records (non-skippable, before tiering)** — search your team's history for
   candidate events + organizers: past attendance and verdicts, invites already in hand,
   organizer connections. This flips tiers in both directions.
5. **Verify + tier** — every density claim needs evidence (prior-year speaker/sponsor/attendee
   lists). Dates MUST come from this year's official source — never recycle last year's; confirm
   the event actually runs this year (cancelled/stale pages are common). Mark FACT vs. inference
   vs. not-found — an honest "unverified" beats a wrong claim.
6. **Outputs + KB update** — spreadsheet + summary, then update the knowledge base.

## Tier criteria (two axes: audience density × closed format)
- **Tier 1**: density verified as FACT (the right people demonstrably attend) AND a 1:1-friendly
  format (small, invite-only, or a VIP track) — or proven by your own past results.
- **Tier 2**: density signals but unverified, OR a large event with a separate VIP track.
- **Tier 3**: topical relevance only (broad/general crowd) — spreadsheet only, omit from summary.
- Boundary rule: a large event's VIP track with FACT-verified density → Tier 1; track exists but
  density unverified → Tier 2.

## Outputs (both required — a chat-only answer is not a valid deliverable)
### Spreadsheet
Columns: No. | Event | Tier | Dates (this year, verified) | City/Country | Category | Format
(size · invite-only? · VIP track) | Attendee profile (FACT) | Why us (why · who · which goal) |
Entry (ticket price · how to apply · deadline) | Internal contact | Website | Source.
Rows grouped by tier with colored group-headers (Tier 1 green / 2 yellow / 3 red); unverified
cells flagged; a separate legend sheet. Trip mode: an in/out-of-window column.

### Summary note (deliver in chat to paste; never auto-send)
- Title + 1-2 sentence scope + verdict ("Tier 1 = N events").
- Per Tier-1 event, 4-5 lines: what it is / attendee profile (FACT) / why it fits the goal / how to
  attend + deadline. Tier 2 one line each. Tier 3 omitted.
- Trip mode: near-miss flags at the end.
- Close with honest limits (invite-only events don't surface on the web), open questions, next steps.

## Common failure modes (each observed in testing — don't repeat)
- Anchoring on famous conferences and deferring the invite-only/side-event layer to "a follow-up
  round" — that layer is the point.
- One category's queries crowding out the others.
- Treating internal-record search as an optional afterthought — it decides tiers.
- Delivering a chat list only — the spreadsheet + summary are the deliverable.
- Trusting last year's dates or dead events — verify this year's official source.
- Silently widening the requested window instead of near-miss flagging.