Intro

Few things in punk bother me more than when Facebook or Instagram are the only ways to find out about shows. For the past decade I've tried many different online and offline projects to provide alternative ways for Montreal punks to promote and find out about shows. I started with a flyer blog (I think), and for many years I did an e-mail list with monthly show listings. For a while there was a monthly print version too. I helped with a telephone hotline. And I've printed and handed out thousands of flyers, even for shows I'm not playing or booking.

Everyone who knows me knows I'm a big advocate of physical flyers and posters, but I also accept there is an online component to good show promotion. Especially in a city with a lot going on, you want people to be able to find out about and share upcoming shows easily, or at least without needing an Instagram account. I'm not pro-online, I just accept that it is a necessary part of our modern social life. So I'll always keep printing and handing out flyers and posters! But I am really against the only online place to find out about shows in a city being a login-walled corporate social media site. This is why I set up an online show calendar.

Montreal ASK A PUNK

In late 2022 I launched Montreal ASK A PUNK. It's an online show calendar, with all the features one might expect:

• You can scroll through a chronological gallery of flyers for upcoming shows.
• Each show has its own page with more details.
• You can search for future or past shows by venue or hashtag.
• You can select a date and see what shows are happening that day.
• Shows are also grouped together in curated collections (by promoter, fests, etc).
• Shows can be submitted anonymously by anyone, but they have to be approved by me or another admin.
• Many local promoters and helpful punks also have an account so they can put up and edit their own shows without approval.
• Submitting a show is as easy as creating a Facebook event. Choose a date, set the start and end time, enter the venue, upload a flyer, write a short description and maybe some hashtags.

• Anyone can just go to https://montreal.askapunk.net and see the shows.
• No account is needed to see the event. Every show has its own link, like https://montreal.askapunk.net/event/total-nada-fucking-lovers-invisible-cities-recall-psychic-armour, that is easy to share in a text message or on social media.
• Events can be imported to other calendar software and tech-savvy users can even subscribe to an RSS feed.
• Other websites can embed the whole calendar or just a part. For example, a venue or promoter can embed a list of all their shows, and it will stay up-to-date and link directly back to the ASK A PUNK event pages.

Montreal ASK A PUNK is also part of The Fediverse, which means anyone with an account on Mastodon or other similar apps can just follow the calendar and see new events in their feed. This is also how people can comment on or like an event, all they need is a Fediverse account on any server (like counterforce.social!) or app they choose.

Gancio

Many people asked me if I built ASK A PUNK myself. NO! The calendar is powered by a piece of software called Gancio, developed by Italian anarchist hackers, originally to provide an event calendar for their hackerspace. Gancio is free open-source software. There's no Gancio service you can sign up for to get a calendar like ours. It's DIY, you have to set it up yourself— but anyone can install it on their own server to host their own calendar, and that's what I did!

How-to: the technical stuff

Hosting a Gancio calendar requires a little bit of tech knowledge. Beyond getting a server (which I talk about below), you need to be comfortable with the Linux command line, a bit of basic "system administration," and have some understanding of how general "internet stuff" works. I won't do a full step-by-step guide here, I just want this to give you an idea of what's involved. The general steps are:

1. Register a domain name (e.g. askapunk.net)
2. Get a server
3. Install Gancio on your server
4. Configure DNS to point your domain name at your server
5. Periodically do backups and keep Gancio up-to-date

That's a broad overview. You can install Gancio on Debian or nixOS, with Docker, or on YunoHost. You'll probably need to set up SSH keys and SSH in to your server (like hackers on TV), and you'll definitely need to do some DNS. If that all sounds like gibberish to you, that's OK. It sounds intimidating, but if you are already curious about doing autonomous computer/Linux things, Gancio is a pretty manageable way to get started. If you want to try learning it yourself, there are too many free resources online to list. I use the LandChad.net page as my reference a lot of the time because it is very simple and clear.

You also might be able to find someone local who can help you out. Any punk who runs Linux, hosts their own website, or has worked a computer job might be your Gancio sysadmin. I was not a professional computer-toucher when I started setting up websites and Gancio calendars, I just knew enough to get into trouble and I learned more as I went.

A server

To set up a Gancio calendar, you need a server: a computer connected to the Internet at all times so other people can access it.

In theory, you can run Gancio on a old computer in your closet at your punk house, but actually hosting stuff on the Internet this way has some downsides. It can run up your home internet bill, there are some security concerns, and furthermore you'll have all the punks in the city mad at you if your internet or power goes out and the calendar is down! But if you want to go that route anyways, YunoHost might be a solution. It's an operating system you can install on an old computer which lets you turn it into a server for many different applications you can install with "one-click," including Gancio.

The more stable and secure option is to rent a server in "the cloud." This is called a Virtual Private Server or VPS. A VPS needed to host a Gancio calendar can cost as little as $5 per month, sometimes even less. The one I have for Montreal ASK A PUNK costs $10-$15 CAD per month and hosts half a dozen busy calendars. It's a little bit of money every year, but it's easily fundraised from a benefit show or a few people chipping in regularly.

You might also have some local nerds who can donate some server space to you. Perhaps a local hackerspace, tech collective, university, or social center. Gancio doesn't require a lot of resources. Ask around! Again, you might find some local techie punks who want to help and donate their time and server space to set this up.

How-to: the social stuff

There's a lot more to running an online calendar besides the technical stuff.

Accounts

No one needs an account to view or submit events on a Gancio calendar, but there are accounts for the folks managing and curating the calendar. Gancio starts out with an Admin user who is responsible for managing everything. You set up this account when you first install Gancio. You want this to be someone trustworthy and reliable to keep the calendar running.

The Admin can invite other users, who get an e-mail to create their account. Other users can be "Users," "Editors," or additional Admins. Users can create and edit their own events, Editors can edit any event, and Admins can edit anything on the site and invite other users.

Montreal ASK A PUNK is set up like this:

• Anonymous submissions are allowed, so anyone can submit a new event, but it has to be approved by an Admin.
• Open registrations are closed: random people can't just sign up for accounts and create events without approval.
• Local promoters who are regular and trustworthy get User accounts: they can create their own shows without approval, and edit any shows they've created. Montreal ASK A PUNK has a few dozen User accounts.
• A few helpful punks have Editor accounts, to help curate the calendar, approve events and edit mistakes or updates. Montreal ASK A PUNK has a handful of Editor accounts.

This is a good system, because anyone can submit a show and there is a nice collective of Editors to help approve those submissions as they come in. About half of the shows are created anonymously and half are created by promoters using their User accounts.

Getting the word out

If you start a new online show calendar in your town, you have to get the word out. In some places, this is easy. People are generally thrilled to find out a resource like this available and will start using it and contributing right away. But sometimes it's a little harder and an online calendar works best if it's a community resource that many people contribute to. I set up Montreal ASK A PUNK a while ago, and I still have trouble with promoters who love that it exists but constantly forget to submit their shows there. Here's my advice:

• Reach out to promoters, to set them up with a User account and walk them through how to submit shows (it's the same as Facebook, if not easier!). Remind them that they can still just submit a show anonymously if they forget their login info. Offer to have them just text you the flyers and you'll take care of the rest. Just keeping bugging them. Eventually they'll get it!
• Get some friends to help get the calendar up to date. At first, you'll have to populate it yourself and make sure the show info is up to date and correct. Ask for help!
• Make flyers promoting your new online calendar and hand them out at shows. People will be stoked!

• Ask promoters to shout out the calendar on their flyers. Your calendar is a central resources for the whole scene, and promoting it benefits everyone. You will find out who is a real DIY community builder, and who is just in it for their own Instagram follower count based on who follows through on this!
• Curate a good calendar. Add a hashtag for each band playing an event. Clean up confusing show descriptions and broken links, correct mistakes (e.g. shows that start at 6am instead of 6pm), add more info like where bands are from or post links to their music on Bandcamp or Youtube so people can check them out.

ASK A PUNK network

Since launching the Montreal ASK A PUNK calendar, I've helped set up a few more:

• Toronto
• Philly
• Buffalo
• Chicago
• Hattiesburg
• Melbourne

There are also a few other online punk calendars that use Gancio that I had nothing to do with!

• Berlin
• Milwaukee

We try to keep a list of online hardcore punk show calendars (not using Gancio, just in general) in our Directory. There are lots more there, and if you know about one please let us know!

Why bother?

Besides fuck Instagram/Facebook/Meta/Tiktok/every sleazy corporate ticket/events listing website?

• It makes it easy to see what's going on tonight, this weekend, next weekend. No digging through Instagram stories to find a disappearing flyer.
• No accounts needed, no tracking, no ads, no capitalism.
• A centralized community resource for your city: one place everyone can post, update, and check shows.
• Decentralized: it breaks us free from all relying on a few massive corporate services to promote punk shows worldwide.
• The calendar becomes an archive of past shows: if people properly add bands as hashtags for each event, you can search for a band and see flyers for all their shows since the calendar started.
• There are many options to check and follow the calendar! Open it in your browser on a computer, check it on your phone (you can even save the site as an icon on your homescreen for easy access!), share links to events that anyone can view, subscribe to RSS, embed on other sites, follow from Mastodon/The Fediverse.

Alternatives

I like Gancio because it has a lot of the features I want, and doesn't have a bunch of features I don't want. It looks pretty good, it's easy for people to add and view events, and easy for me and others to manage and administrate. It's not perfect, but it's open source, so it's steadily improving and anyone can contribute suggestions or requests. Bugs get fixed and good ideas for new features are implemented.

Some people might prefer to set up a local message board as an alternative and less-corporate place to share shows. Message boards can be great for a local community like a punk scene, but a message board isn't meant to be a show calendar. You don't have to worry about moderating flame wars if your calendar is just a calendar. Gancio does one thing and does it well.

I'm skeptical of upstart centralized "alternatives" like global message boards or other central sites meant to provide a calendar of show events and discussions for the whole world. The Counterforce is about decentralized and autonomous resources. Investing in a big central message board or calendar site, used by people all over the world and run by strangers in a random far away place doesn't seem sustainable to me. I host a few ASK A PUNK calendars for friends in other cities, but this is just because I want to jumpstart the idea. I would much prefer to help people set up their own calendars in every city than just become Mr. ASK A PUNK and run the calendars for every city in the world. I care about DIY, and setting up your own online show calendar with Gancio is very DIY.

But if you are really into this idea, and just can't scrape together the technical know-how needed in your town, there are other solutions! Just make a website and keep it updated! You can set up a free website with Neocities, upload flyers and list upcoming shows, and create an e-mail address for people to submit shows. It's a bit more work, but it's still a great way to liberate show listings from the corporate ad-prisons of Instagram and Facebook.

And don't forget the offline alternatives! Keep printing and handing out flyers and putting up posters. A monthly printed show calendar can be a great compliment to an online calendar. Here in Montreal, the monthly zine newsletter La Chaîne includes show listings pulled from Montreal ASK A PUNK.

I hope this has introduced you to the idea of a Gancio-based online show calendar, or helped demystify the ASK A PUNK calendars if you'd already encountered them and their ilk. I hope you will be encouraged to help set one up in your town! It really is not that hard, and it can effect great change in your scene. If you want any help, or you do set up any kind of online calendar for your local hardcore punk scene please get in touch!