Conference Events Scout

Find upcoming conferences and rank them as business opportunities for speaking, sponsorship, booth, partnership, attendance, or skip decisions.

Conference Events Scout discovers public conference listings across business, marketing, technology, AI, ecommerce, cybersecurity, product, startup, fintech, health tech, and education technology markets. It deduplicates events, filters them by region and date range, then uses AI to score each event against your company or product description.

The actor is built for recurring event pipeline research. Use it to decide which conferences deserve sales, marketing, partnerships, or thought-leadership attention before your team spends time reviewing every listing manually.

Why Use This Actor

• Discover relevant conferences from maintained public directories instead of pasting event URLs one by one.
• Rank conferences by commercial fit, not only by date or category.
• Get practical recommendations such as speak, sponsor, booth, attend, partnership, or skip.
• Generate talk-topic ideas and use-case angles for stronger event planning.
• Run the same search every month or quarter and append results to an existing dataset.

Sources

The actor resolves sources internally. Users choose categories, region, dates, and company context; they do not need to manage source bundles or fallback settings.

Current discovery sources include:

• online.marketing for ecommerce, digital marketing, advertising, MarTech, SEO, content, analytics, growth, and AI-related marketing events.
• conventions.io for technology conferences such as AI, DevOps, cloud, cybersecurity, JavaScript, Python, data engineering, Kubernetes, and open source.
• techconf.directory for developer, cloud, AI, security, data, and software engineering conferences.
• eventea.eu for European business, technology, marketing, product, SaaS, startup, sales, and leadership events.
• eventbrowse.com for business and technology conferences across AI, fintech, health tech, cybersecurity, operations, and innovation.
• martech.zone/conferences for marketing technology, sales, cloud, data, and AI events.
• 10times.com for broad business, technology, marketing, security, finance, startup, and sector-specific coverage.
• clocate.com for global conference directory expansion when category coverage needs more breadth.
• usconf.com, legaltechevents.com, and category-specific curated event lists for additional business and technology coverage.
• apify/google-search-scraper as an internal fallback when primary sources return too few results and Apify credentials are available.

Broad directories can include trade shows, expos, summits, forums, and business events. The actor filters and scores them, but users should review official websites before committing budget.

AI Analysis

By default, AI scoring is routed through Apify's OpenRouter integration. On Apify Cloud this uses the run's APIFY_TOKEN to call OpenRouter through Apify, so users do not need to provide their own OpenRouter token for the default path.

If you provide your own LLM credentials, the actor uses your selected provider instead of the default OpenRouter via Apify route. Supported options are:

• OpenRouter with your own key
• OpenAI
• Anthropic
• Google Gemini
• OpenAI-compatible endpoints
• No AI scoring

Conference names, descriptions, dates, locations, categories, and your company description are sent to the selected AI provider for scoring. API keys are secret inputs, used only for provider requests, and never written to the dataset or logs.

When AI is unavailable or disabled, the actor still returns deterministic scores based on category and text relevance. AI scoring produces better recommendations.

Input

Input	Type	Description
categories	array	Conference markets to search, such as AI & Machine Learning, E-commerce & Retail, SaaS & Developer Tools, Cybersecurity, Cloud & DevOps, or Fintech.
region	string	Geographic filter: Worldwide, Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, or Latin America.
dateFrom	string	Earliest event start date. Leave blank to use today.
dateTo	string	Latest event start date. Leave blank to use one year from today.
maxResults	integer	Maximum ranked conference opportunities to save.
companyDescription	string	Company, product, audience, and business goal used for AI scoring.
aiProvider	string	AI provider for scoring. Default is OpenRouter via Apify.
aiApiKey	string	Secret API key for your own provider. Leave blank for OpenRouter via Apify or No AI scoring.
aiModel	string	Optional model override.
aiBaseUrl	string	Base URL for OpenAI-compatible providers only.
datasetId	string	Optional Apify dataset ID to append results to.
runId	string	Optional pipeline identifier copied to output rows.

Example input:

{
  "categories": ["AI & Machine Learning", "SaaS & Developer Tools"],
  "region": "Europe",
  "dateFrom": "2026-05-01",
  "dateTo": "2026-12-31",
  "maxResults": 20,
  "companyDescription": "A B2B SaaS company selling web data, scraping automation, and AI data workflows to developers, agencies, and e-commerce teams.",
  "aiProvider": "openrouter-apify"
}

Output

Each dataset row is one conference opportunity.

Field	Description
name	Conference or event name.
startDate, endDate	Event dates when detected.
city, country, region	Normalized location fields.
attendanceMode	Detected format such as in-person, online, or hybrid.
category	Category searched when the conference was found.
description	Short public listing description when available.
websiteUrl	Official or best available conference website.
opportunityScore	Overall opportunity score from 1 to 100.
icpMatch	Ideal customer profile fit from 1 to 10.
recommendedEngagement	Recommended action: booth, speak, sponsor, attend, partnership, or skip.
audienceFit	Concise audience-fit explanation.
engagementRationale	Why the actor recommends that engagement path.
suggestedTalkTopics	Talk ideas when speaking appears relevant.
relevantUseCases	Product, sales, or marketing use cases for the event audience.
runId	Optional pipeline identifier when supplied.

Example output:

{
  "name": "AI World Congress 2026",
  "startDate": "2026-06-23",
  "endDate": "2026-06-24",
  "city": "London",
  "country": "United Kingdom",
  "region": "Europe",
  "attendanceMode": "in-person",
  "category": "AI & Machine Learning",
  "description": "Conference for AI leaders, technology teams, and business decision makers.",
  "websiteUrl": "https://www.aiworldcongress.com/",
  "opportunityScore": 86,
  "icpMatch": 9,
  "recommendedEngagement": "speak",
  "audienceFit": "Strong fit for teams evaluating AI data workflows and automation.",
  "engagementRationale": "The audience likely includes technical and commercial buyers for web data products.",
  "suggestedTalkTopics": [
    "Building reliable AI data pipelines from public web data",
    "Operational lessons from large-scale web automation"
  ],
  "relevantUseCases": [
    "AI training data collection",
    "Market intelligence automation"
  ]
}

API Usage

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/trovevault~conference-events-scout/runs" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "categories": ["AI & Machine Learning"],
    "region": "Europe",
    "dateFrom": "2026-05-01",
    "dateTo": "2026-12-31",
    "maxResults": 10,
    "companyDescription": "A B2B SaaS company selling web data and AI automation workflows."
  }'

Limitations

• Conference directories can be incomplete, stale, or promotional.
• Broad sources such as 10times and Clocate may include trade shows, expos, and business events that need review.
• Dates, locations, and official URLs depend on what each source publishes.
• AI scoring is a recommendation layer, not a guarantee of ROI or audience quality.
• The actor does not register for events, verify sponsorship availability, or confirm speaker deadlines.
• Official event websites should be reviewed before buying booths, sponsorships, or travel.

FAQ

Do I need to provide source URLs?
No. Choose categories, dates, region, and company context. The actor resolves sources internally.

Does it always use AI?
On Apify Cloud, the default route uses OpenRouter via Apify. You can also provide your own LLM key or disable AI scoring.

What happens if I provide my own LLM token?
The actor uses your selected provider instead of the default OpenRouter via Apify route.

Are conference details guaranteed?
No. The actor structures public listings and adds recommendations. Always verify important details on the official event website.

Can I use it for monthly monitoring?
Yes. Schedule it with the same categories and date window, and optionally append to an existing dataset with datasetId.

Troubleshooting

• If no results are returned, widen the date range, choose Worldwide, or add adjacent categories.
• If AI fields look generic, provide a more specific companyDescription.
• If using your own provider, confirm aiApiKey, aiProvider, and aiModel match that provider.
• If using an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, include aiBaseUrl without /chat/completions.

Changelog

v0.1

• Initial TroveVault version based on the original Conference Scout workflow.
• Added broader conference categories, internal source resolution, detail-page enrichment, OpenRouter via Apify by default, optional user-supplied LLM providers, TroveVault schemas, and product-focused output.