What is it all about?
The Dublin Event Guide for Free Events is a weekly e-zine for nearly all free events in the Greater Dublin area.
It was started by Joerg Steegmueller in June 2007 as an e-mail to about 10 of his friends to let them know about some interesting free events in Dublin. They told their friends, more people got interested and now more than 10,000 readers get the e-zine every week.
The Dublin Event Guide is mainly an e-mail newsletter /e-zine and this website is more an archive and a resource when your Inbox is not at your finger tips. So if you want to receive the Dublin Event Guide every week in the moment it is completed, make sure you subscribe.
The focus of the Dublin Event Guide is to inform about all sorts of free events (e.g. Festivals, Street Performance, Gigs, Concerts, Exhibitions, Talks & Lectures, etc). It is a service for event-goers who like free cultural events on one side and event organisers who invest a LOT of time and effort to run free events, but then have difficulties getting the word out.
Since the start I have listed events from the Dublin City Soul Festival, the Festival of World Cultures, the Temple Bar Diversions Festival, the Dublin City "Summer in Dublin", the Bray Summer Festival, the Culture Night, the Fringe Festival, the Dublin Theatre Festival and the Dublin Opera Festival, to mention just the bigger events.
Organisers are explicitly invited to send information about their free events to dublineventguide [at] gmail.com. A limited number of non-free events can be included through competitions if the organisers can make a few tickets available for such a competition among the thousands of Dublin Event Guide readers.
If you would like to be added to the distribution list of the Dublin Event Guide (for Free Events), just subscribe on the Home Page of this site or send a brief e-mail to dublineventguide [at] gmail.com.
Media Coverage
Dublin Event Guide Press Release on reaching 10,000 readers (09 Nov 2011)
Find the Press Release here.
RTE's Culture Programme "Capital D" (30 June 2011)
The Dublin Event Guide was featured on "Capital D" and a number of the events that regularly are included in the weekly e-zine were introduced as well by Anne Cassin. For a short period of time, it can be viewed here.
The Irish Independent, 01 Sept 2011: "Going out is the new staying in: how you and the family can enjoy free fun..." by John Cradden
A full page was dedicated to the "Dublin Event Guide (for Free Events)" and John Cradden wrote:
When the recession began, staying in became the new going out as far as entertainment was concerned. Today, money is still tight, gig tickets are still an arm and a leg, and a cinema outing leaves little change from €10 per adult (never mind the popcorn).
But if cabin fever is already hitting fever pitch in your home, perhaps it's time to take a different approach. If you know where to look, you can easily find a whole raft of free special events and festivals to check out, as well as ways to gain admission to your favourite haunts for a lot less than full price.
"The most important thing is not to assume that culture and entertainment has to be expensive," says Joerg Steegmueller, the man behind the Dublin Event Guide, a website and weekly email newsletter that lists only free events in the Dublin area.
Steegmueller started the free events guide in 2007 and is now hugely popular, with nearly 10,000 email newsletter subscribers. He still produces it in his spare time and has never missed a single deadline in the four years since he started.
"I list 80-100 free events every week and there are events available for all age groups, for all interests and in all parts of Dublin," he said. He says the reward for the organisers of a free event is the response they get. "If a lot of people come they will be a lot happier to run another free event, than if only a few people are in the audience."
A free event also doesn't mean lesser quality than a paid one. "The quality of a free gig or festival is at least as good as the quality of a non-free event," says Steegmueller.
Because free events are more accessible, it means that nobody is excluded based on financial ability and, especially during times of economic challenges, there is no need for people to stay at home or to miss out."
[....] Find the full article here with the second part of the article (a user experience) here.
Irish Times, 17 March 2008: "Have you money to burn?" by Conor Pope
Among many other great suggestions on how to save money, Conor Pope writes:
"Free at last
Find more free stuff to do. There are hundreds of events happening around the country every week that won't cost you a penny. Listings magazines are the traditional source of information about such things, but there's also the Facebook Free Dublin guide. Run by Joerg Steegmueller, the e-mail digest of what's on in Dublin contains a head-spinning amount of free stuff from writing workshops for foreigners and feminist walking tours to classical concerts in the Hugh Lane Gallery and astronomy lectures in Dunsink Observatory. It now has close to 1,000 members and at the time of writing was looking for a new name."
The Sunday Times Culture Magazine, 03 February 2008: "Clique Here" by Kathy Foley
In an article about social networking in general, and facebook in particular, Kathy Foley wrote about the Dublin Event Guide (for Free Events) and how the number of subscribers to the weekly e-zine rose dramatically once I had created a facebook group."
Radio & TV
The Dublin Event Guide was mentioned on RTE1, TodayFM, Phantom 105 and Dublin City Radio and Joerg Steegmueller was interviewed on Phantom 105 and Dublin City Radio.
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