Finding a venue usually starts in a search engine and ends in a spreadsheet: twenty tabs of venue websites, a list of names someone typed up, and quotes scattered across email threads. Venue Sourcing in Geiger Events replaces that with a search, a map and a pipeline, so the shortlist, the quotes and the contacts live in one place next to the event they are for.

Search real venues on a map

Type a city or an area — "Berlin", "Austin", "SoHo NYC" — and Venue Sourcing searches real venues from OpenStreetMap and plots them on a map. Narrow the radius to within 2, 5, 10 or 25 km of the area you searched, so a venue list for a downtown conference does not fill up with places an hour out of town. Preview each result on the map before you decide whether it is worth a call.

Shortlist into a pipeline

When a venue looks promising, shortlist it. It becomes a lead in your sourcing pipeline with the details that matter when you compare rooms:

• Location and capacity, so you can rule out rooms that are too small before anyone quotes.
• Quote, so the pipeline can show your average quote across the venues you are considering.
• Contact and notes — who you spoke to, their email, and what they said about availability, catering, AV and terms.
• Status, from shortlisted through to booked.

Instead of asking "which venue quoted what?" in a team thread, everyone opens the same list.

From booked venue to running event

Once a room is chosen, keep it as a reusable record in venue management — location, capacity, amenities and contacts — so the next event there starts pre-filled. If the venue has fixed seating, build its seat map once and attach it to every event you hold there; if it is an exhibition hall, lay out the booths the same way.

A sourcing workflow that works

1. Search the city, set the radius, and scan the map.
2. Shortlist five to ten candidates with rough capacity.
3. Contact them and log each quote and the conversation in the lead's notes.
4. Compare on capacity, quote and terms, and mark the winner as booked.
5. Save it as a venue so the next event there is a two-minute setup.

Structured proposals and instant booking with participating venues are on the roadmap. Today, Venue Sourcing is the search and the pipeline — the part that saves most of the time. It is part of the conference toolkit alongside call for papers and the agenda builder; see the conference software overview for how they fit, or the pricing page for plans.