by on October 27, 2009 in Agile

Central Agile Calendar?

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As an organizer of a small Agile user group and potentially a small Agile conference, I’ve noticed that the Community lacks one good central calendar with a list of events. If we created one, would you find it useful?

I’ve suggested that InfoQ create one and need to determine what the minimum feature set would be.

  • Events are tagged with their geographic location, time, date, cost—with everything else in free form text
  • Only not for profit events are allowed. I’m not quite sure what test to apply here. I just know that we would drown in Scrum/Agile training announcements if they were permitted on the same calendar.
  • Subscribe via RSS
  • Subscribe via monthly/biweekly email.
  • Moderated to prevent spam
  • Anyone can submit an event

In the wine world, something like this already exists. Please see the following: http://www.localwineevents.com/events/listing/all/76

My questions:

  • Would this be useful to you?
  • Would you subscribe?
  • What features am I missing from the minimum feature set?
  • Would you be willing to help moderate this?
  • Is there any existing open source/free software that can be used for this job?
  • Would you think to look on http://planet.infoq.com/ to find the calendar?

BTW I’ve seen a couple of other efforts at: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/2228/ and – Google Calendar, but neither appear to have taken off.

Please share your ideas.

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Related posts:

  1. Agile Ottawa Presents: “How to Communicate so your Clients will Remember”
  2. Agile Retrospectives

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  • http://danielwildt.com Daniel Wildt

    Can’t we use Agile Alliance website?
    http://agilealliance.org/events

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a67edfa7970c Phil Green

    It’s a good idea. Trick will be how to get it to “take off”. As you point out several others haven’t. The usefulness will be proportional.

  • http://www.TheHackerChickBlog.com abby, the hacker chick blog

    I would LOVE something like this. I agree on non-profit only except… I’d actually like to see agile conferences (non-profit or for-profit) as well if that were possible – say, local events in my geographic area plus national conferences in my country.

    I would not think to look on InfoQ, but would on Agile Alliance’s site.

    I’d be willing to help moderate it.

  • http://lisacrispin.com Lisa Crispin

    I also thought the Agile Alliance kept events up to date, but of course, organizers have to go add the event there, maybe not everyone knows to do that. But what you describe sounds way better, I’d sure use it.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/mlevison Mark Levison

    Daniel – I think that Agile Alliance calendar works only for people who already know its there. If I google Agile Calendar – there is an InfoQ news item from two years ago mentioning Deb’s upcoming.com group and then this post. The Agile Alliance, Scrum Alliance etc don’t even on the page. At least InfoQ is high traffic enough to find people who didn’t know there was a calendar in the first place.

    I’m open to any alternative that will get the support of the community.

  • http://lisacrispin.com Lisa Crispin

    I don’t see any reason not to have an InfoQ calendar. If people want to use the AA calendar too, then great, can’t hurt to have info in 2 places IMO. (I wouldn’t feel the same way about code, of course).

  • http://profile.typepad.com/racheldavies Rachel Davies

    Mark,

    People still seem to be using the Agile Events (http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/2228/) which Deb setup.

    Any member on the Agile Alliance website can add an event to http://agilealliance.org/events and it’s already moderated. Agile Alliance website is being revamped to offer even more accessible event calendars. Talk to Phil Brock MD of Agile Alliance about when this will be launched.

    best regards,

    Rachel Davies

  • http://www.jbrains.ca J. B. Rainsberger

    I was going to write what Rachel wrote, so +1 to her.

  • http://paircoaching.wordpress.com YvesHanoulle

    I seem to have missed this post.
    I’m not sure what you mean with has not taken of.
    On my agenda, I have 27 people adding events all around the world.
    I have no idea how many people are looking or using the calendar (can I do that with google?)

    I di dnot know about the infoQ one when I created the calendar (or forgot). Later I was aware of this one.
    Yes it would be great to have one place.

    I prefer this kind of calendar’s over the one from the AA as it integrates with my normal calender.
    As far as I know, I can’t do this with the one from AA.
    is this correct?

    Y

  • Mark Levison

    Yves – thanks for the comment. I appreciate the value of the calendar, but 27 people writing to it isn’t alot. My goal was to leverage InfoQ size and the fact it gets outside of the regular Agile Community (i.e. you, me, Rachel, JB, …). However the idea never got the traction I wanted and I haven’t chased it any further.

    Cheers
    Mark