Comments on: SXSWi Calendar for all

By: kazi

kazi — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:39:34 +0000

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By: Jason Beaird

Jason Beaird — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 22:02:36 +0000

Woohoo! Thanks Doug. Just added it to my Google Calendar…from “The Real Story Behind Snakes on a Plane” panel.

By: Jon Livingston

Jon Livingston — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:32:48 +0000

Excellent – thanks for putting this together. Was just starting to put together my conference schedule. This really saves a lot of time.

By: Douglas Bowman

Douglas Bowman — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:56:15 +0000

@Tantek: It is essentially (now) just a static snapshot. It started as a subscription to a dynamic feed from sxsw.com (we created a calendar account there, and added every event to it). But we wanted more info for each event than what came with the feed details. (I.e. we wanted to include the full session description with all participant info, rather than a repeat of the location, a remove link, and the number of people that added this event to their calendar, as the sxsw.com feed does.) Plus, we also wanted all the evening events combined into the same calendar, which isn’t typically possible with a normal subscribed calendar.

It’s not ideal. But we didn’t copy over the events until Tuesday evening, so at least it will still be fairly fresh. Each of us who helped pull the calendar together has access to add, modify, and delete events. So any of us can update it as we go if we note any significant changes, or learn of new events.

Ideally, we’d be plugged directly into the source, and would have been able to supplement the original feed with more events and additional details.

Or, rather, SXSW organizers would just use a scheduling tool/app (one that provided a comprehensive feed as a side benefit) that contained all daytime and evening events and all relevant details that they know. And they’d make updates directly within that app. Until then…

By: Tantek

Tantek — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:19:04 +0000

Doug, this is very cool, and I especially applaud your (expected) focus on usability. Well done.

One question (w followups)

Is your aggregate sxsw calendar a *static* (as in copy/paste) snapshot of the other event sources? If so, how often are you going to go thru the trouble of manually updating from all the various sources? Or if not, then how will we find out about last minute new events and updates to events?

Or if your aggregate sxsw calendar is a *dynamic* subscription to the other event sources, then how are you automatically reconciling duplicates of the same event which many of the sources have?

By: Jacob Patton

Jacob Patton — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:00:40 +0000

Hey Doug, that's great that everything's up at GCal! May I humbly suggest that great minds think alike? ;-) I noticed the SXSW site had microformats but was otherwise not very user friend, so I made a social network out of it—introducing Conferenceer! On the site, all of the panels (including yours) are available via iCal and XML, and folks can browse by person or panel. A couple of tricksy new features are on the way, too. I just launched the site Monday, but it's been fun watching folks sign up over the past few days, and it's very interesting to see what panels they pick. (By the way, Doug, since your profile's already on Conferenceer, I'll email you login info in case you want to change it up.)

By: kazu

kazu — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:29:18 +0000

Nice job, Doug! Thank you much about this. I’m heading to Austin in few hours, so see you there.