Tech Event Globe

A 3D globe of tech conferences, summits and expos for the whole technology community, not just developers. See where events are and when they happen, then narrow them to what matters to you.

Live site: https://www.techeventsapp.us

Status: live. It reads approved events from a Supabase database and falls back to 27 built-in sample events if the database can't be reached.

Features

• 3D globe (globe.gl / three.js) with country fills and borders, plus a flat 2D map for devices without WebGL
• Focus areas: cybersecurity, offensive cyber, AI, machine learning, developer, architecture and cloud, open source, general tech
• Time windows: next 30 / 90 / 180 days, 1 year, or all dates
• Clustering: dense cities collapse into a count node and open into individual events on click or zoom
• Search by event, city, country, topic or year
• Distance filter from a chosen city or your location (a location from the browser is never put in a shared link)
• Deadlines for speaker submissions and early-bird pricing, only where an official page confirms them
• Add to calendar: Google Calendar link and an .ics download
• Shareable views: filters and the open event are stored in the URL hash

URL parameters

Parameter	Meaning	Example
w	time window in days, or all	w=90
c	focus areas, comma separated	c=cyber,offsec
q	search text	q=kubecon
n, mi	distance origin (a city from the data) and miles	n=London&mi=250
e	open event id	e=defcon35
v	flat for the 2D map	v=flat

Run locally

It is a single static file. Open index.html in a browser, or serve the folder:

npx serve .

The page loads globe.gl and fonts from CDNs, so it needs a network connection.

Deploy on Vercel

Import the repo in Vercel. Framework preset: Other. No build command and no output directory needed. Every push to main redeploys. The site runs at https://www.techeventsapp.us.

Backend (Supabase)

The page runs without a backend. To use a database:

1. Create a Supabase project (dedicated to this app).
2. Apply supabase/migrations/20261026120000_create_events.sql (SQL editor, or supabase db push with the CLI). It creates events and event_deadlines with PostGIS, row-level security, and an events_near(lat, lng, miles) function.
3. Run supabase/seed.sql to load the 27 sample events as approved.
4. Put the project URL and the publishable (anon) key in config.js. Never put a service-role key there.
5. Reload. If the table is empty or the request fails, the page falls back to the built-in sample.

Access rules: anyone can read events with status = 'approved'. Signed-in users can insert events as pending. Approving or rejecting is done with the service role (dashboard or the future ingestion job).

Event ingestion

A scheduled GitHub Action (.github/workflows/ingest.yml, Mondays 06:17 UTC, or run it by hand from the Actions tab) pulls upcoming conferences from the open confs.tech conference data, geocodes the cities with OpenStreetMap Nominatim, skips anything already in the database (any status, so rejected events do not come back), and inserts the rest as pending. Nothing shows on the site until you approve it. Code is in ingest/ and has no dependencies (Node 22).

Setup, once: in the repo go to Settings, Secrets and variables, Actions, and add SUPABASE_URL and SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY (the service role or secret key from Supabase, API settings). That key bypasses row-level security, so it lives only in GitHub secrets and never in config.js. Then run the workflow by hand with dry run on, read the summary, and run it again with dry run off.

What it skips: online-only events, entries without a city, past events, bad dates or links, and events longer than 21 days. It never changes a row that already exists.

Review the queue in the Supabase table editor, or in the SQL editor:

-- what is waiting
select id, name, start_date, city, country, categories, metro
from public.events where status = 'pending' order by start_date;

-- approve everything you checked
update public.events set status = 'approved' where status = 'pending' and source like 'confs.tech%';

-- or approve / reject one
update public.events set status = 'approved' where id = 'some-event-id';
update public.events set status = 'rejected' where id = 'some-event-id';

Things to check while reviewing: the category guess (confs.tech "data" events are filed under machine learning, which is only a nearest fit), the metro grouping, and odd city names in the source data. Run the unit tests with node --test ingest/test.mjs.

Data

The built-in sample lives in the RAW array inside index.html:

[id, name, start, end, city, country, lat, lng, metro, categories, url, kind, source, venue, note]

• kind is official (organizer site) or listing (a third-party list)
• metro groups events for clustering, so use the same string for the same city area
• Deadlines are in the DEADLINES object, keyed by event id

The database uses the same fields (categories is text[], source replaces the sample's source column). See the migration for the exact columns and checks.

Dates move. Confirm with the organizer before you book.

Roadmap

1. Supabase with PostGIS and row-level security (schema and loader are in; project setup is a manual step above)
2. Submit-an-event form and an approval queue
3. Port to Next.js (App Router) with a server-rendered page per event
4. Ingestion job (confs.tech feed is in; more sources and LLM clean-up can follow)
5. Quality dashboard and an MCP server for querying events

Credits

• globe.gl (MIT)
• Country shapes from Natural Earth via world-atlas (public domain / ISC)
• Event data compiled from organizer sites and public listings
• Automated listings from tech-conferences/conference-data (MIT), the data behind confs.tech
• Geocoding by OpenStreetMap Nominatim (data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL)