[okfn-discuss] Calendar

Mon Jan 30 14:14:32 UTC 2006

Ahoy,

The upcoming.org module doesn't look complete to me, though I've not tested it 
yet. Usually complete modules are listed in the 4.6 modules page, whereas the 
module is only listed in the CVS modules page. Also it will need work to make 
it compatible with Drupal 4.7, essential for RemixCommons.

As for the way forward, once Matt Lee sorts out the FC-UK web site we can add 
a block to the sidebar listing events from upcoming.org. That will be a start 
- we can then encourage people to submit more events there. When we establish 
our newsletter, which is already going to be syndicated by the Free Software 
magazine (and hopefully more magazines after that) I hope there will be some 
added incentive for people to add their events. In the meantime we can also 
look at sponsoring somebody to get the Drupal module up to scratch, or if we 
can't raise the cash then we'll have to find a willing volunteer.

If we had the volunteer time / money we could take what Rufus points out about 
the upcoming.org API and Drupal's events module and see if we can't win 
ourselves independence of upcoming.org by making Drupal perform the same 
function. Have Drupal be able to run as a kind of 'central' calendar to which 
other sites submit their events, that offers all the RSS feeds we need.

Regards,
Tom

On Monday 30 January 2006 13:19, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> So to summarize I think the feeling is we should go with drupal and/or
> upcoming.org. My only reservation about upcoming.org is that it is not
> open and just been snaffled by yahoo and I never liked investing time
> and effort in something that has the potential to lock me in.
>
> However Looking at the drupal event api what's good is that not only
> does it support upcoming.org's REST interface but it can use it to talk
> to other drupal sites (BTW Tom I couldn't work out from
> http://drupal.org/node/27953 whether this module is complete or not --
> you seemed to be implying it needs sponsoring in order to be complete).
>
> Anyway I've now installed the drupal event module on
> http://drn.okfn.org/ so you can check it out to see what it is like.
> Unfortunately all the upcoming support seems to be in drupal >= 4.6 and
> okfn is currently running 4.5 (the stable debian version).
>
> ~rufus
>
> Tom Chance wrote:
> > Ahoy,
> >
> > I've been looking at upcoming properly for the first time today, maybe
> > you should check it out again? It has:
> > - tags with RSS feeds
> > - metadata for venue & group, both with RSS feeds
> > - an API that Drupal almost supports
> >
> > Even the RSS feeds would be great, so we could have an 'upcoming FC-UK
> > events' bit on the (soon to be revamped) FC-UK site. Handy :)
> >
> > Since it seems, to somebody out of touch with all this web2.0 whizzyness,
> > more popular than the others you mention I would have thought it would be
> > more likely to be well maintained, and for other CMSs to have decent
> > support for the API?
> >
> > Anyway, if somebody has really strong feelings for a particular solution
> > I'm happy to be swayed. But a 15 minute play and a readup on Drupal
> > support makes me think that upcoming would be a good option. If we could
> > secure some funding to get the Drupal upcoming module fixed up (Rufus?
> > any ideas) I'd be sold.
> >
> > Then I could start entering events myself in the naive hope that others
> > will follow ;-)
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Tom
> >
> > On Thursday 26 January 2006 14:37, Jo Walsh wrote:
> >>On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 01:09:30PM +0000, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> >>>upcoming.org/eventful.com/evnt.org
> >>
> >>upcoming has terrible metadata, and was eaten by Yahoo! recently
> >>(so perhaps the latter will change the former)
> >>
> >>i kind of like evnt.org, i spent a little time last year writing
> >>libraries to talk to its *incredibly badly documented* RESTful API.
> >>but i stopped using http://evnt.org/zool/ after a while. i see a core
> >>of people are still using it though, i am not sure the group that set
> >>it up (with arts council sponsorship) are still actively running it.
> >>
> >>It has the nice low-impact thing of being 'taggable' and emitting
> >>decent XML feeds of stuff (append '/_xcal' to the end of event URLS,
> >>and there are inbox/index feeds).
> >>
> >>In *theory* it is open source, in practise i don't know if there is a
> >>package release (is python / quixote / cheetah / mysql based) or even
> >>public details for its svn repos. I wrote an RSS/RDF aggregator
> >>component for it which never got used, but that is where it was heading.
> >>
> >>There's a pile of links about its innards halfway down
> >>http://wiki.wirelesslondon.info/NodelSoftArchitecture
> >>
> >>ugh wiki comment spam :/
> >>
> >>-jo

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