"Expanding Calagator's Geo-awareness", notes from WhereCampPDX 2009

[Igal Koshevoy]

From http://www.wherecamppdx.org/wiki/2009/calagator

Discuss proposed changes to Calagator (an open source community calendar) so it can support content in multiple regions properly, so one website could effectively offer events in any area. Proposed changes include the ability to browse, search and get feed listings for events and venues based on location and range. We'd like to hear suggestions about how to best do this in terms of backend implementation, frontend interface, and content management so we can continue providing quality content for these new areas. Proposed by Igal Koshevoy.

Background:

• Calagator is a free, open source platform.
• Calagator.org provides a way to publish aggregated calendars for tech events in Portland, e.g., user groups, camps, etc.
• There are 6+ instances supporting their own regions, e.g., http://fosskalendern.se/ in Sweden.
• Answers: What events are happening? When? Where? By what organization?

Calagator current features include:

• Events list
• Events search
• Event show
• Venue show
• Add event
• Import event
• Recent changes

Geo-awareness improvements sought:

• How do I browse events near me (some default location and range)?
• How do I search for events at a specific location and within a specific distance?
• How do I set my preferred location? Or locations? And range?
• How do I subscribe to a feed of events filtered by location/range?
• How do I moderate events filtered by location/range?
• How to easily specify lat/long for queries?
• How to easily specify range for query?

Notes:

• How to make calagator more map-friendly?
• How to get a feed of events near a location?
• Default/preferred location?
• Search for events during a time period and locatin.
• Locational filtering for home, events, venues, feeds and changes .
• Admin add a list of specific regions for the user to select from.
• Developers could bake-in a library like the Yahoo place names database to provide a list of regions, e.g. “Portland metro area”.
• User could use a UI control to pick location: (1) a metro {remember last ~3 metros used}, (2) location search or zipcode and range, (3) user's preferred default
• User could use a UI control similar to Upcoming to select events: “Search for [_] near []” where the location is sensible guestimate of region/city/etc, and then the user can refine this when viewing the results. These may default to some sensible value, like 50 miles.
• User could use a UI contorl similar to that used on Flickr.
• To grow successfully in other areas, we need committed evangelists that believe in this idea, are willing to connect communities, and curate the data to make sure it's good.

Other changes proposed:

• FIXME: Each event and venue must prominently be labled with a “Distance to Cartopia: ___” and possibly, “WARNING: THIS VENUE IS MORE THAN 3 MILES FROM CARTOPIA!”
• Add a mobile friendly version which, for example, puts the “Hi there” section on the home page elsewhere so that the events run down the left side of the page.
• FIXME: Why is it claiming that events are sorted by “score” if you visit the events list without doing a search or sort?