You are right. It may take a while for people to support it. Not many of us even expect community verified listings on the web. Especially when we get burned out by all those outdated lists and site out there.
The guild speaker stuff does look useful. I use three searches on the home page because they are extremely easy to use:
-- Enter zip code, and click the red events button for quilting events in an area.
-- Enter zip code, and click the blue all button for shops and other places in an area.
-- Enter starting zip, ending zip and click blue go button to shop a route map and all the shops & museums along the way.
I did notice the shop hop events changed. It now includes an interactive map of the shops in the hop. I am going to use it to do the NY State Row By Row Shop Hop starting in July. If they keep adding stuff like this, more and more of us will support it.