EDIT 1/31/2025:
Here’s a link to the schedule for 1/31/2025 along with and example sheet for Google Calendar import with formulas. You can modify and rearrange as needed from the instructions below.
Gary Con 2025 is coming up. It’s almost time to sign up for games. But how do you choose? At the time of writing, there are 2399 events scheduled.
The tabletop.events website lists all the events with limited filtering and search capability. There’s also not an easy way to compare game times and lengths with a schedule you’re building out. Last year and this year I used Google Sheets to organize the games schedule and pick out the games and events I wanted to try to sign up for. I then used Google Calendar to construct my own schedule and manage my backup events in case my first choices were full. This is a writeup of how I did it. It will work for any convention on the tabletop.events website, or any other convention that allows you to export the events schedule as a csv file.
Step 1: Download the schedule csv file
The schedule will change slightly as the convention nears. The count of current signups will also change, so ensure you’re grabbing the latest version of the schedule.
Head to the garycon convention page at Gary Con XVII
Select in the dropdown menu: Attend-> Events Schedule
Press the button “Schedule CSV” on the right side. This downloads a CSV file.
Step 2: Import the tabletop events schedule CSV
Import the CSV into your spreadsheet editor of choice. I used Google Sheets, but you can use Microsoft Excel or anything else.
You can import the CSV by dragging and dropping into Google Drive and then selecting “Open with” → Google Sheets”.
Step 3: Manipulate the data
Once the spreadsheet is open in Google Sheets, make your life easier by freezing the first row, which is the column headers.
Select the first row by clicking the “1” on the left, It should select the entire first row of 21 entries. Then choose from the menu “View” → “Freeze” → “1 row”.
This makes it so the headers don’t get sorted along with everything else when you start organizing the schedule.
I also like to make a duplicate of the sheet that I can modify while keeping the original untouched. Select the sheet name at the bottom, there’s a down arrow. Select “Duplicate”.
I recommend using a lowercase sheet name with no spaces. In the examples below I use the name “mysheet”.
Step 4: Search, sort, pick your games
Now you can search and sort to your heart’s content. Select the down arrow when you hover over any colum letter (in this case D for “Host Names” column) and you can sort by game master/host. Or if system matters to you, you can sort by rules system.
You’ll be able to find all the games happening on each day of the convention, Thursday through Sunday.
How I pick games is I create a few new columns. (which you can do from any column down arrow menu.
One column indicates my interest, which I use for my initial big swath sweep based on GMs I recognize and want to play with, games I want to try out, and times/days I know will definitely work for me.
The second column I create is for priority. This helps me narrow down all the games that take place in the same time window.
Games are scheduled all day, but most games are 4 hours in length and I generally use the break down of “Session 1 games starting between: 8-10am, Session 2 games starting between 11am-1pm, Session 3 games starting between 2pm-6pm, Session 4 starting 7pm+.”
I prefix these so I know what day the slot is on (for example “F1” for Friday slot 1).
I then pick about 3 games in any given time window and rank them so I know which events to try and sign up for first.
Once you’ve narrowed your selection down, you can format your selections for a Google Calendar CSV import.
Sort by “Rank” column so the games you want to add to your calendar are at the top of your spreadsheet.
I have 20 events I want to put in google calendar. Many of them overlap times. The columns are at the top from row 2 through 21.
Step 5: Create a new Google Calendar CSV
Make a new sheet using the plus button at the bottom left.
You can get as fancy with this as you’d like, but I find that the more information I have, the easier it is to reference my calendar during the convention to see when and where my next game is.
These are the column headers I used which are recognized by Google Calendar. I don’t remember if they need to be in order or if they are case-sensitive. Best to use the same column order and letter case.
Subject, Start Date, All Day Event, Start Time, End Time, Location, Description
Step 6: Google Calendar CSV Column Formulas
Fill in the second row (below the column headers) with the following formulas. You can change these however you’d like. My column letters won’t match yours so you’ll need to plug in your own. When you see “mysheet”, plug in the name of your sheet that you narrowed down your games to (not the name of the google calendar import sheet you are currently editing).
Where you see something like “mysheet!K2”, that means, reference the other sheet “mysheet” and column K, and row 2. In my case this is “Event Number” row 2. Row 1 should be the column headers.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON TIME ZONES: The data involving time is tricky because the time format needs to be in your time zone that Google Calendar is set up for also accounting for daylight savings screwing everything up. Mine is Pacific Time, so UTC -7. Just try one entry and see if the time and date make sense. Remember this is your time zone, not necessarily Gary Con Wisconson time zone (UTC - 5). The reason to use your local time zone adjustment is because Google will use local time zone for the import regardless of the time zone you set for your calendar.
Subject
“Event Number” + “Event Name”
=mysheet!K2 & " - " & mysheet!F2
Start Date
See above about time zone stuff.
“Start Date (UTC)” day, converted to your local time
=TEXT(mysheet!D2 - TIME(7, 0, 0), “M/dd/yyyy”)
All Day Event
FALSE
Start Time
See above about time zone stuff.
““Start Date (UTC)” time, converted to your local time
=TEXT(mysheet!D2 - TIME(7, 0, 0), “HH:mm”)
End Time
See above about time zone stuff.
“Start Date (UTC)” time + “Duration (minutes)”, converted to your local time
=TEXT(mysheet!D2 - TIME(7, 0, 0) + mysheet!I2/24/60, “HH:mm”)
Location
“Room” + “Space”
=mysheet!S2 & " - " & mysheet!T2
Description
“Host Names” + “Description”
=mysheet!H2 & " - " & mysheet!L2
Step 7: Pull down the formulas
Select row 2 for each of the columns you have. In my case, the first 7.
Click and drag that blue dot on the bottom right of the last column’s row selection. You want to drag it down to the last row in your selection on the previous page. In my case, row 21. Those are the rows that correspond to the events I want (since they are all at the top).
Behold the magic of spreadsheets.
You can make any modifications to your scheduling spreadsheet from before (“mysheet”) and your calendar import sheet will update automatically. You can even change the column order. It will update your formulas automatically. Just make sure you keep your selected games sorted as the first rows in your spreadsheet.
Step 8: Download your Google Calendar CSV
Making sure you are on the sheet you want to download, select “File” → “Download” → “Comma Separated Values (.csv)”.
Step 9: Create a new Calendar for Gary Con 2025
You could import your CSV to your any existing google calendar, but this makes it easier to change stuff or just start from scratch with a new calendar.
Navigate to Google Calendar and click the settings gear.
Go to “Add Calendar” → “Create new calendar”
Give it a name and choose Time zone (GMT-06:00) Central Time - Chicago. This doesn’t actually matter for the import, since as noted above it will use your local time zone, but maybe it matters somewhere else, I don’t know.
Then select “Import & export” → “Import”.
For “Add to calendar” select the calendar you created.
Choose the .csv file you downloaded specifically for google calendar.
Click the “Import” button.
Step 10: Refine your schedule
You can navigate back to the main Google Calendar page and select your new Gary Con 2025 calendar from the list in “My Calendars”. Navigate to the dates of the con. March 20 - March 23.
You’ll see all the games in your local time zone.
I suggest selecting the “Day” view for refining your schedule.
When you are actually at the con, the times should reflect Wisconson local time (GMT -06) instead of your own.
If you’d like the side-by-side view you see above with your local and Wisconson time go to “Settings” → “General” ->”Time zone” and set your secondary time zone as “(GMT-06:00) Central Time - Chicago”.
Step 11: Sign up for games!
Here’s the signup schedule. Games fill up fast, so try to have your choices picked and ready to hit the buttons when signups for your ticket type open. Remember to check if your events are full or nearing capacity.
I’ll see you there!
