London, Tuesday 12th April 2012, After a 
long bank holiday weekend it was great to meet the team at the Press Association. Every visit is like an education in data management and I always love to understand more about the numerous verticals that the Press Association continue to develop and grow. They continue to invent was to use data, gambling, news, sport and this week I learn they event have a weather channel… what ever next.
Today I was visiting to really start to understand in detail how their events licensing service works, who they supply events data to and to start to develop our relationship with an organisation that really is one of the leading companies in the UK supplying events data to a list of headline publishers.
So let’s start with their official statement on events data and who they supply.
The Press Association maintains a database of over 1 million live events taking place at more than 24,000 venues across the UK and Ireland.
Every kind of leisure event is covered, including film, theatre, gigs, exhibitions, comedy, clubs, dance, opera, classical music, places to visit, family and community events.
In addition to comprehensive listings services, our talented team of critics source pictures and write informed reviews and previews for key events.
From weekly cinema listings and gig guides to community events and places to visit, our event listing services provide the ultimate What’s On guide.
This is now my third visit to the Press Association and they really are a friendly bunch, meeting the CTO and the commercial teams has proven to deliver real insights in to the issues around the the world of events data collection, licensing and publishing. Today the Press Association collects event data from all over the web using a manual process to ensure the issue of event duplication is resolved, quite an amazing feat by anyone’s standard if you think they are handling over 1 million events.
The new reception
Be prepared for the new reception as it really is ‘sparkling’ with an impressive new multi screen TV fast tracking you through the latest feed of daily news, sport and images from around the world.
I waited and waited for an events story but it would seem like event data information is currently unloved. We are looking forward to delivering more attention to the value of events data and creating opportunities for more websites to be able to access the Press Association events data feed and improve the quality of events data across the web.
We are looking forward to our next meeting with the Press Association in May and hope to be able to bring you more news of our journey…