In turbulent times it can help to focus on small steps and tangible signs of progress. In that spirit, here’s a fragment of the collaborative events calendar I’ve been trying to summon into existence:
07:00 PM DREW HICKUM & THE COLONELS (armadillos)08:00 PM Roger McGuinn & Tom Rush (eventful: Colonial Theatre)08:00 PM Patty Larkin | Francestown Meetinghouse (monadnock folk)08:30 PM Chris Fitz (eventful: E.F. Lane Hotel)
A pretty good selection for a Saturday night in the Monadnock region! That’s good news for all of us living around here.
What’s especially encouraging, for me, is the process behind the scenes. That sequence of four closely-spaced events comes from four contributors who are publishing three different flavors of calendar feed, using Eventful, Google Calendar, and WordPress.
Best of all, only one of those contributors was me.
While this is nice, the website http://www.luckycal.com has already leapfrogged this type of calendar syndication to a whole new level and I expect you would find it interesting to try out.
> http://www.luckycal.com/
This looks interesting, thanks.
To be clear about what I’m doing, though, there’s no magic in the aggregation, I’m just smashing feeds together. The challenge is to get people to understand how and why to publish those feeds in the first place, and actually follow through.
Once those ical endpoints exist, a world of possibility opens up. But getting people to publish them is the first step, and it’s a doozy.
I like the small wins approach; for more on this strategy see
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2007/04/small_wins_a_se.html
which leads with a pointer to the Karl Weick paper.