✦ Case Study

AI-Powered Event Publishing

An automated workflow that turns a flagged email or Slack message into a drafted, approved, and published calendar event — human intervention optional.

THE PROBLEM

Unpretentious Palate is a Charlotte-based digital publication covering food and drink, run by Kristen Wile. They publish a local events calendar for their subscribers. Keeping it current means constantly processing a stream of incoming press releases, Instagram posts, and Facebook Events — each in a different format, none of them ready to publish to Google Calendar. A part-time assistant would read each submission, reformat it into the right structure, request approval, and manually create the calendar event. It was slow, expensive, and capped by how many events one person could reasonably keep up with.

THE SOLUTION

We designed a system that automatically receives, reformats, and routes event submissions for approval and publication — all from two simple triggers: a flagged email or a URL dropped in Slack. An AI layer reads the source, extracts the relevant details, and formats them into a clean draft. If a location address is missing, an automatic map lookup resolves the full location. The draft lands in a central approval sheet and the operator gets a Slack notification that it’s ready to review. When the operator marks the event Approved, the event automatically publishes to the calendar and subscriber feed without any additional steps.

The result is a low-touch, reliable publishing flow that processes more event sources, faster, and at a lower cost than the manual system it replaced.

WHAT HAPPENS AUTOMATICALLY

Once the event is submitted, the system manages the rest of the workflow behind the scenes, including:

  • Detecting the source type — email, Instagram, Facebook Events, or general URL

  • Extracting and reformatting event details into the correct structure via AI

  • Resolving incomplete addresses using a maps API lookup

  • Drafting a structured event record in the central approval sheet

  • Notifying the operator in Slack when drafts are ready for review

  • Publishing approved events directly to Google Calendar

  • Updating the subscriber feed automatically on publication

IN ACTION

Flagging an email or sending a URL in Slack triggers the full draft pipeline — event details extracted, address resolved, and record ready for approval in seconds.

THE RESULT

  • Reduced operator involvement to 2 touchpoints: flag, review & approve

  • Eliminated a recurring part-time assistant expense with no paid tooling added

  • Expanded coverage to four source types: email, Instagram, Facebook Events, and general URLs

  • Reduced turnaround time from hours to seconds per event

  • Maintained an optional human approval layer — drafts still get a final review before anything publishes

SYSTEM FLEXIBILITY

This architecture works with any combination of email, messaging, spreadsheet, and calendar tools your business already uses. If a structured approval layer doesn't exist yet, that's typically where we start.