Thursday, April 18, 2013

An Analysis of public Calendars.

The NhvEvents Calendar System with Google has more potential to work better for all citizens than many of the existing local events calendars; both events coordinators, and potential events attendees have a better chance of success.  Below is the InfoNewHaven Calendar.  The reason it looks so mixed up and has so many repeat entries is on account of the following: 
  • There's nobody really observing the content on the calendar itself in an administrative role, keeping the content on there to be non-redundant and accurate
  • There's no color coordination between the topics of events, whereas on the NhvEvents Calendar, outdoor events appear in green, music scene events are in purple, and so forth. 
  • Anyone can post to it, so there's no oversight or training among contributing entities with regard to what types of events go up there. 
Other calendars that exist which are similar are ANDI (which as many of the same problems but seems to cater to the same crowd, perhaps more arts and university arts related), as well as Lee Cruz' GnhCommunity Calendar, which tends to steer events regarding community activism related events.  If all of these calendars were to exist and to be properly curated by the parties responsible for their creation and existence, they would actually be able to be useful to the public.  As it is, though, the public needs a reliable calendar.  That's why there's this.



The mobile application ANDI is another option:
Here is the Andi Video.  Why am I in this video??!!  (1:33)