[okfn-discuss] Calendar

[Rufus Pollock]

This is a really good idea Tom. It has been discussed several times and 
even recently Andrea wrote to me about it. The problem always seems to 
be the question of centralization as well as who maintains it. The best 
solution would be some method of aggregation but there is no 
well-defined metadata system I know of that allows you to do this (you 
can aggregate blog posts but they will appear in order posted not when 
the event is occuring -- there is no easy way AFAIK extract the date the 
event is happening on).

Andrea recently mentioned this issue recently as well and pointed at 
dedicated sites such as:

upcoming.org/eventful.com/evnt.org

The alternative, which you mention, is to install our own event system 
using Drupal (or something else) which we then just update with events 
we want to be there. OKFN already has a drupal installation running the 
DRN news/info site:

http://drn.okfn.org/

It is using of the debian stable branch of drupal (4.5.x i think) and I 
can easily give you ssh access if you would like to have a go at 
installing  modules (if you sign up to DRN I can also make you an admin 
if you are not already).

~rufus

Tom Chance wrote:
> Ahoy,
> 
> Partly for my sanity, partly for enthusiastic people outside the heady heights 
> of the elect, partly for a free culture newsletter I'm putting together with 
> various people...
> 
> Can we have, or is there already, a Mother Of All Calendars?
> 
> Something to hold dates for every free information-type public event going on 
> in the UK, optionally the ability to categorise and filter out things you 
> don't want. Lots of trusted people would need access to add their events. I 
> think it would be really handy to have something like this for all OKFN 
> groups and beyond (ORG, FFII-UK, etc.)
> 
> I had a quick look around for candidate software. There's Drupal's event 
> module, since I know Rufus uses Drupal for a few OKFN sites. I also found 
> Plans (www.planscalendar.com) though we'd have to make do with the icons for 
> categorisation.
> 
> If there's interest in this, and Rufus gives me the appropriate permissions & 
> instructions, I'm happy to spend an afternoon setting one up.
> 
> Regards,
> Tom
>