I have created an RSS feed for Bay Area technology events such as conferences and meetings at Stanford and Berkeley. The feed is at
> [http://feeds.feedburner.com/bayareatechevent](http://feeds.feedburner.com/bayareatechevent)
And you can subscribe by email with this form (the form may not work in your RSS reader):
__Anyone can add events to the feed by tagging the event on del.icio.us with the tag [bayarea.tech.event](http://del.icio.us/tag/bayarea.tech.event).__ That is all you have to do! (This kind of collaborative RSS feed is called a [groupcast](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupcast).)
If you’re in Boston and you’re interested in biotech, you might start a boston.biotech.event groupcast. My personal interest is in internet technologies so I might start a bayarea.internet.event tag in the future. But, for now, let’s keep it “simple” and stick with bayarea.tech.event.
I decided to create this feed because there are lots of cool technology events in the Bay Area but there is no single place that aggregates them well. This way, we don’t need to wait for every group that holds cool events to start an RSS feed.
We can do it ourselves, collaboratively!
P.S. Wouldn’t it be cool if
1. We entered event information (like time and place) in the del.icio.us “extended” field.
2. Then ran the del.icio.us feed through some kind of [hcal](http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar) web service that automatically translates the “extended” field to hcal format.
3. And finally subscribe to the hcal-ified feed with a calendering program?
Answer: Yes, it would be wicked.
Maybe someone can figure out how to translate the del.icio.us feed into [iCal](http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ical/)’s .ics format?
Is there any way to expire events after their occurrence? Or to time-order events submitted by different posters? I suppose that’s what you’re getting at with the hcal extension. The basic idea is great though.
Alison, you are totally right the way to do this is with hcal or something else. del.icio.us does not yet support the structured features we are looking for.
Why not just use EVDB for this? It is exactly what it was built for. It’s free, it supports everything you need, and was built to share events, unlike del.icio.us which was built to share bookmarks.
This was a low-friction way to start this up since lots of people already are using del.icio.us and I want to encourage participation in the groupcast. I will try to spend some more time with EVDB though.
Here’s a bayarea.tech.event SmartCalendar on EVDB, with RSS and iCalendar feeds.
Brian,
Can you explain exactly what you have created? Does it integrate into the del.icio.us feed or is itseparate. The problem with getting people on EVDB is that you need to sign up for an account which I think is too much friction given that people already have del.icio.us accounts.
Nivi,
Anyone can visit del.icio.us and browse the bookmarks. No need to register. However, to create bookmarks on del.icio.us, one needs to click on the “register” link on del.icio.us, where you’re asked to create a user name, type in a password, confirm password, type in an email address, and type in the text that’s garbled in an image (”we need to check that you are human”).
Anyone can visit EVDB and search for events or browse the calendars. However, to create personal or shared calendars, one needs to click on the “register” button, where you’re asked to create a user name, type in a password, confirm password, and optionally type in an email address.
Why do you think EVDB has “too much friction”? It’s easier to sign up on EVDB than it is on del.icio.us. And there’s no need to sign up for anything if you don’t want to. You can search all day if you want, find stuff, subscribe to the iCalendar or RSS feeds, no registration required. I don’t see friction. Perhaps you could explain why you do.
Brian,
What I meant by friction was that I imagine a lot of my readers already have del.icio.us accounts but I imagine most of my readers don’t have EVDB accounts.
So if I used EVDB for this, my readers would probably have to sign up for a new service. That would raise the barrier to their participation.
I wonder if there is an interesting way to solve this problem?
I’m quite fond of this simple calendar:
http://www.foopee.com/punk/the-list/
The format is google-like in its simplicity. Maintenance is presumably low-effort. Maybe Graham Spencer, cool rich guy that he is, would make his script available.
Mozilla’s Sunbird calendar program is supposed to run on a variety of platforms unlike ical, which I believe is now only supported on the Mac. Sunbird has allows user to import HTML-formatted remote calendars from the web.
I love the idea, I agree foopee is ideal for short term planning, like buying concert tickets. But where’s a list of Bay Area technology conferences posted with submission deadlines for speakers, so I find out about them 3 – 4 months in advance – that’s what I’m looking for! Thanks Nivi.