About — Burnoff.fyi

What is Burnoff.fyi?

The world is changing fast, and much of that change is being driven from here. Every day somewhere in the Bay there's a talk, a salon, a conference — people working out what those changes mean and why they matter to the rest of us.

The hard part is finding the ones that matter to you. They're scattered across dozens of websites, buried in newsletters, or hidden behind venue-specific calendars. Almost as if obscured by fog.

Burnoff.fyi clears away that fog. We aggregate events from universities, civic institutions, bookshops, museums, and independent organisers across the Bay Area and surface them in one place — easy to search, easy to skim, and updated daily. Lectures, salons, book talks, bar-hosted talks, science nights, forums, and more.

The site is a personal project, hand-curated and built with love for the Bay Area and the curious minds who live here. If you find it useful, tell a friend.

Built by Joshua Wiese ↗.

Burnoff for iPhone

The same calendar in your pocket — plus weekly picks chosen from preferences that never leave your phone. See how it works.

Download on the App Store

How to use the site

Filters

Use the dropdowns to narrow by topic, vibe, location, or time window.

Topic ▾ Vibe ▾ Where ▾ When ▾

Click an option once to include it — a pill appears. Click the same option again to exclude it instead (shown struck through). Mix and match freely.

Culture & Humanities × Science & Tech ×

The search bar matches against event titles, venues, and descriptions as you type — useful when you have something specific in mind.

Search…

Ask AI

This functionality will make recommendations from the events listed on Burnoff.fyi, based on your query, and give you reasons for each recommendation.

Ask AI

Views

Ways to browse — from a tight list to a full map. Switch between them with the view toggle in the top-right of the event list; a divider separates the layouts from the display toggles that follow.

Compact — tight rows, ideal for scanning a long list. Click any row to expand it. This is where keyboard navigation shines.

Preview — the full card with title, time, venue, and a short description.

Expanded — description surfaces upfront so you can read without clicking.

Map — plot every event on a map of the Bay Area — pins group by venue and grow with how much is on. Drag the date slider (or press play) to sweep through time, and tap a pin to open its events in the list below.

Images — event art shows alongside cards when the source provides it, linked to the original event page. Use this button to hide or show images.

Venue map — on wide screens, a small venue map slides out beside an open card, with a link to open the location in Google Maps. Use this button to hide or show.

Source — on wide screens, a panel about where the event came from slides out beside an open card, with a link to the source. Use this button to hide or show.

Keyboard navigation

Press j to move down and k to move up through events. Press Enter or o to open the event link. Press Esc to clear your selection.

Dark mode

Click the Burnoff logo in the top-left to open the menu, then toggle dark mode on or off. Your preference is remembered across visits.

Adding to your calendar

Each event has an Add button. Click it to save to Google Calendar, Outlook, or download an .ics file for Apple Calendar.

Add

What are the sources?

We try to pull events automagically from the sources below.

Are we missing something? Let us know.

How is AI used?

How it works

Two models do the work.

As events pour in from more than 100 sources in dozens of formats, Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5 reads each one and sorts it: assigning categories, tagging its vibe, tidying the description, and setting aside anything that isn’t really a talk or gathering for the curious.

Google’s Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite answers you. Ask AI sends it your question, and it reads everything coming up and argues for a few events. In the app it also makes personal recommendations: you write a page about what you’re interested in, and it works through the calendar against that.

Your preferences stay on your phone

The page you write lives on your device. It travels with a request when recommendations are made — by you, or by your phone on the weekly schedule you set — is used once to answer it, and is stored nowhere. We keep no copy, no profile, and no history of it. Edit or delete it whenever you like; because nothing is kept elsewhere, deleting really does delete.

There are limits

Every AI answer costs money. Browsing, filters and search are free and unlimited. Ask AI is free up to a handful of questions a month, and personal recommendations are part of the subscription — which is what pays for the compute rather than ads or selling anything about you.

Privacy

We don’t store your questions, your preferences, or the answers. The only thing we keep is anonymous totals — how many questions get asked and what they cost — so we can keep an eye on the bill. Subscribing is anonymous too: payment is handled by Apple, and we never see your name, email or card.

The full privacy policy covers everything else, including what Google does with what we send.