A calendar hub for Manchester UK

Jon UdellMarch 27, 2012http://jonudell.net

What it isHow I made itHow you can improve it

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ManchesterUK/html

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ManchesterUK/html?view=technology

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ManchesterUK/xml?view=technology

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ManchesterUK/json?view=technology

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ManchesterUK/ics?view=technology

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ManchesterUK/rss?view=technology

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ManchesterUK/stats

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http://elmcity.blob.core.windows.net/manchesteruk/ManchesterUK.feeds.json

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/services/ManchesterUK/get_editable_metadata?flavor=feeds

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http://elmcity.blob.core.windows.net/manchesteruk/tag_sources.html

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source breakdown

Eventful 164

Eventbrite 1173

Facebook 14Meetup 137Upcoming 114Other iCalendar 112

Manchester United Football thismonkey.com 9Manchester City Football thismonkey.com 8Portico Library Google Calendar 95

Other iCalendar breakdown

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Eventful venue nativehttp://eventful.com/ical/chester_nh/venues/chester-academy-/V0-001-000633236-2

Eventbrite organizer synthetichttp://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ics_from_eventbrite_organizer?organizer=The%20Launchpad&elmcity_id=ManchesterUK

Facebook Page synthetichttp://elmcity.cloudapp.net/ics_from_fb_page?fb_id=162147880467082&elmcity_id=ManchesterUK

Meetup group nativehttp://www.meetup.com/WeAreChangeManchester/events/ical/WeAreChange+Manchester/

Upcoming venue native http://upcoming.yahoo.com/calendar/v2/venue/671529

native vs synthetic iCal feeds

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http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/url_helpers

(Other helpers for: extracting ICS from CSV, extracting ICS from RSS+xCAL, filtering ICS to ICS based on keywords or date/time.)

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source breakdown for four cities

Manchester UK Manchester NH Boston MA Seattle WAEventbrite 164 27 481 168Eventful 1173 232 2272 2013Facebook 14 34 434 218Meetup 137 301 926 1129Upcoming 114 14 181 52

Other iCalendar 112 531 3665 3335

Total 1714 1139 7959 6915

Other iCalendar % 6.5% 46.6% 46.0% 48.2%

The public calendar scorecard

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Step 1 (automatic): The elmcity service scans Eventbrite, Eventful, Facebook, Meetup, and Upcoming for candidate feeds.

Stages of hub development

Step 1 yields two outputs:

a) http://elmcity.blob.core.windows.net/manchesteruk/taggable_sources.html is a page of links

b) http://elmcity.blob.core.windows.net/manchesteruk/taggable_sources.html is corresponding json

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Step 1 (automatic): The elmcity service scans Eventbrite, Eventful, Facebook, Meetup, and Upcoming for candidate feeds.

Stages of hub development

Step 2 (manual): A human processes the taggable_sources files: removes junk, adds and tags useful feeds, looks for related iCalendar feeds.

Step 2 yields a hub like the Manchester UK hub we see today.

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Step 1 (automatic): The elmcity service scans Eventbrite, Eventful, Facebook, Meetup, and Upcoming for candidate feeds.

Stages of hub development

Step 2 (manual): A human processes the taggable_sources files: removes junk, adds and tags useful feeds, looks for related iCalendar feeds.

Step 3: The hub is adopted by a curator who works toward lighting up the iCalendar “dark matter.”

Step 3 has never really happened yet.

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iCalendar “dark matter” for Manchester UK

http://oddbar.co.uk/odder/

http://www.iwm.org.uk/events/iwm-north

http://www.stclement-chorlton.org.uk/diary.php#whats

http://www.parrenthorn.co.uk/calendar/

http://www.philandaly.com/

http://www.holdengallery.mmu.ac.uk/exhibitions.php

http://www.stannsmanchester.com/whats-on/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/events/index.shtml

http://www.therubylounge.com/

http://www.starandgarter.co.uk/star4/WhatsOn.aspx

http://www.drybar.co.uk/calendar.php

http://www.chinese-arts-centre.org/

http://thedeafinstitute.co.uk/calendar.php

http://www.o2apollomanchester.co.uk/

http://moholive.com/index.php/event-listings

http://www.mmu.ac.uk/news/events/

http://www.manchestersalon.org.uk/

http://www.cities.manchester.ac.uk/events/

http://www.anthonyburgess.org/visiting-us/whats-on

http://www.blankmediacollective.org/events/

These are web pages with calendars that trap event info in HTML silos.

All of these could easily be converted, using Google Calendar or Hotmail Calendar or Outlook or Apple iCal or any another standard calendar app, to dual use:

1 An HTML/JS widget for the site 2 An iCalendar feed for syndication

Who’s going to tell them?

Why will they care?

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CMS wall of shame

http://www.dea.com/

http://schoolworld.edline.com/

http://www.serviceu.com/

http://www.peoplecube.com/products-other-web-event.htm

http://search.constantcontact.com/event-marketing/index.jsp

http://www.schlu.net/

These, and many others, offer calendar modules without iCalendar support.

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http://icalvalid.cloudapp.net/

(Inspired by http://feedvalidator.org)

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Key messages

- Many public events are published online (as HTML or PDF)

- Few are machine-readable (as iCalendar)

- All could be dual-purposed using standard calendar apps

- The ICS ecosystem could work like the RSS ecosystem- a pub-sub network- open, standards-based

- It’s so simple nobody thinks of it