A new locally built platform aims to give Roanoke Valley residents a single place to find concerts, markets and other community events without scrolling through multiple websites and social media pages.
SupNoke is a free event hub created by Roanoke residents Craig Dennis and Marissa Lorenz. The site and companion app gather listings from venues, organizations and public sources, then link users back to official venue or ticketing pages.
Dennis said the idea grew out of his and Lorenz’s experience after moving to Roanoke about three years ago, when they found it difficult to track what was happening on any given night.
“We had to look in a million different places,” Dennis said. “Some of the venues have a decent presence, some of them are crappy. Some of them have stuff on Facebook, but it took like a hundred different locations to find what’s happening all in one place.”
Progressive web app instead of app stores
SupNoke runs as a progressive web app, or PWA, which installs directly from a website instead of through the Apple or Google app stores. Users visit supnoke.com, then can add the app to their phone from the browser.
Dennis, whose background is in industrial design, mechanical engineering and software, said PWAs are becoming more common because they avoid extra technical requirements imposed by traditional app stores.
“It simply allows you to avoid having to put your app on a web store,” he said. “It downloads and installs directly from your website. It’s trending. It’s definitely what people are doing now.”
Tools for finding and sharing events
For users, SupNoke is designed to personalize and simplify event discovery. Residents can browse by category, save favorites, set reminders that connect to their calendar apps and share listings with friends.
As people like events, those listings move higher on individual feeds, giving more prominence to shows and gatherings that draw interest from the community.
Dennis said the platform also is meant to serve people who prefer not to rely on Facebook but still want an easy way to see what is happening locally. All event listings link back to the organizers’ own sites or ticketing pages.
Features for venues, artists and organizers
SupNoke’s founders say they built the system to be low-friction for venues, artists and event organizers.
Venue owners and promoters can create accounts, set up recurring events and reuse “patterns” for regular performers without re-entering the same information every time. Independent artists, market organizers and others can submit their own listings, which are reviewed by Dennis or Lorenz before going live.
SupNoke also offers tools that let organizations integrate the platform directly into their own web presence. Venues can embed a SupNoke-powered calendar on their websites so that events created in SupNoke automatically appear both on the app and on the venue site at the same time. Organizers can generate QR codes and shareable links to use on posters, business cards and social media.
Dennis said the goal is to reduce duplicate work for local businesses and to help residents keep up with shows, markets, festivals and other gatherings across the Roanoke Valley.
“SupNoke is about supporting what already makes Roanoke so vibrant — not competing with it,” co-founder Lorenz said in a written statement.
The post SupNoke launches as free Roanoke Valley event hub first appeared on News/Talk 960-AM & FM-107.3 WFIR.
