Center for East Asian Studies
1) Static, List-format, Low level: http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events/
a) Would love to have access to php
2) Events are added by sending email to calendar administrator
3) Very excited about getting involved, wouldn’t take much to switch to a new system
4) Would like to receive as well as post events
5) Often posts to different calendars (e.g. newscenter, IAS) – would like their site to be the clearinghouse for all things E. Asian in the Bay Area
a) Our project may threaten that to some extent since anyone can access all UC-Berkeley events, but as long as they do the best filtering they should be able to maintain it.
6) Interested in filtering by:
a) category/region
b) sponsor
c) disciplinary focus vs. regional focus (e.g. political science vs. Japan)
7) Special fields: Region, Discussant
8) Would be nice to have security that could still allow other organizations outside UC-Berkeley to post events
9) sponsors - usually have 1 or 2 but up to 4-5 (guess 10 would be an upper limit); the sponsors are almost always other campus parties
10) Current process for submitting an event:
1. email to calendar admin - various program coordinators of the various units (center for japanese studies, chinese studies etc) (these same people are responsible for also submitting the event to the berkeley events calendar and the larger IAS calendar and any others they want)
2. email in text, attached brochure or word doc
3. eric cuts and pastes info into html template
4. don’t often have entry requirements , usually all open to public
5. archive events back about 4 years , planning on keeping it
ASUC
1) Dynamic, Calendar-format, Medium level, but bad: http://www.asuc.org/?name=calendar
a) Php to MySQL db
2) Would like to share their events
3) Wouldn’t take much for them to switch – not concerned about their look & feel
a) Would like to be able to change color scheme, location of buttons
4) Events added through webform anyone can use, Raman gets an email, no issues, but could add a flag in the db to allow him to screen them first
a) Events should be of interest to students
b) Better system would give each group an account and allow them to add & edit their own events.
5) Suggested that good filtering system would be important
Center for Latin American Studies
1) List-format, Low level: http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7001/Events/index.html#current
2) Their concerns are mostly political, events often driven by their chair
a) Don’t want to display two people who don’t like each other on their front page at the same time
3) Monica emails events to webmaster, Greg, no database used
4) Look & feel important…want to differentiate themselves from other departments
5) Send all events out on a listserve so don’t want too many
6) Would like a calendar view, overview, and ability to search events on their site
7) Special fields: Geographic area of interest: mexico, central America, brazil, south America, carribbean, Subject area of interest; labor/trade, art/culture, politics/public policy, human rights
8) Current Practices
a) Technology
i) Uses “Calsnet.net” for internal calendar and static HTML for public website
ii) Runs off Socrates (no SQL, no database)
iii) Uses MS Access to keep track of members
iv) Uses Excel to keep track of postings in other calendars
b) Event source
i) Presenter list first generated by staff meetings
ii) Monica Pon contacts presenters and gets info (Title, Bio, description, time, date, venue, etc.)
iii) Monica Pon sends info to Editor, who reviews and gets approval from Chair and Co-chair.
iv) Editor sends approved event info to the web developer, Greg (galadan@socrates.berkeley.edu), to post as HTML on their website
c) Archive
i) Website shows history of events.
9) Look and Feel - Important. Images are also important on website.
10) Evaluation of current system
a) Not very efficient, difficult to update
b) Want to be able to categorize events by people, geographic area, subject area.
c) Many political issues when dealing with website.
d) Have limited resources
11) Other Calendars
a) Posts to other calendars via email (IAS, Berkeleyan, Daly Cal, Townsend, Radio KALX)
b) Don’t post other department’s events unless co-sponsored event.
Haas
1) Calendar-format, High level, use WebEvent: http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/calendar/
2) Like their system but are open to change, especially if they could customize the system & fields to meet their needs.
3) Events can be entered by anyone in form, it is emailed to Debra and she approves them, enterer and Debra gets an email when it’s posted
4) All events on their calendar should be Haas-related…the calendar is a marketing tool
5) Events are archived and they might even implement a data warehouse to help tell how much certain companies have been involved with the school.
6) Features suggested: spellchecker, ability to put in links without knowing html, make it easy to modify events, repeating events
7) They share their events with the Newscenter – would like to choose what to share without making it mandatory
8) Also have a printed publication called Haas Newswire
9) Current Practices
a) Technology
i) Uses “Web Event” – a commercial product, quite inexpensive (~$500)
ii) Uses own server (IIS, Linux Redhat Apache) and programs in Perl
b) Event source
i) Public submits event through web form
ii) Debra reviews and approves event (a lot of work for one person)
iii) Debra logs into system as admin and adds event to calendar
iv) Currently events are all public and not limited to specific audiences (would like to have different audience settings)
c) Archive
i) No
d) Look and Feel
i) Important but will to compromise a little for efficient and easy to use system. Current customization is adequate.
ii) Calendar mainly for marketing purposes and don’t need to go into very much detail
e) Evaluation of current system
i) Works 2/3 of the time and in general works pretty well for their purposes. Good for novice users
ii) Many known bugs and work-arounds.
10) Other Calendars
a) Don’t push or pull events from other calendars. Would like to share events in the future.
b) Only posts Haas related or co-sponsored events
Journalism
1) List-format, but dynamic and High level behind the scenes: http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/events.html
2) Also have an internal website that shows only internal events
3) Have many private events
4) Would like to be able to maintain his own stylesheet**
5) Concerned about losing functionality, such as email lists
a) Have a feature that an email about an event can be sent when it is entered
b) Choice of several email aliases
c) Important to avoid the mistake of inviting the public to a private event
6) Events can be submitted by anyone who uses the submit form, but only those with access to the intranet can reach that
a) Event is approved by one of the event staff
b) They also manually add events to the main Journalism web page
7) Uses include files so that when a field is changed in the database, he only has to make an update to the website in one place
8) Mike would like to do a complete update to their site (including implementing a content-management system), but doesn’t have the time & technical level of the staff at the J-School is very low
9) Special event types: Moderator, panel discussion, book signing, broadcast info (webcast, TV)
10) Suggestions: ability to create directions to events
11) Many events have multiple parts (e.g. receptions & main event) & ability to create related events is important to them
Berkeley Arts Museum/ Pacific Film Archive
1) Current Practices
a) Technology
i) Uses File Maker’s form (web companion) to publish HTML
ii) Familiar with XML, XSLT
b) Event source
i) As soon as events are finalized for publication, they are entered into the Filemaker Pro database
c) Archive
i) Don't archive, except for film notes (certain film events that have in depth info about film and screening)
d) Look and Feel
i) Very important. Thinks current website is “pretty”
e) Evaluation of current system
i) Pretty happy with current system except no easy way to publish events to other calendars
2) Other Calendars
a) Would like to share events with other calendars (Berkeleyan, Central UCB site) but don’t post other department’s events (unless co-sponsored events)
b) Currently do submit some events to general UCB calendar but not very many because its time-consuming
c) More important to push event information than to pull to own calendar
3) Currently in the process of creating a separate event management system to keep track of things like caterer, billing, alcohol request form etc. - suggestion that this type of information could be a useful extension of the general event schema
4) One concern they have is that on a big calendar if not everyone releases all their events at the same time, then it to a user it might look like those people just don't have any events scheduled because they don't know about the 2 month cycle
5) Feature request: a way to put a tentative event into the system so that other groups could see what potential conflicts there might be when they are scheduling a big event
“Live” Calendar (live.berkeley.edu)
1) Current Practices
a) Technology
i) Perl, HTML, Javascript, Unix
ii) File server on Unix (no database)
iii) Developed plug-in for club calendars (see calstuff.blogspot.com and csba.berkeley.edu)
b) Event source
i) User sends web form request to become member (membership approved by John or Patrick)
ii) As a member, user can add, modify, delete events through web event manager. No event approval process.
c) Archive
i) All past events are accessible on website. Don’t archive but occasionally saves entire directory as backup.
d) Look and Feel
i) Important. Likes to have control of icons and overall look
e) Evaluation of current system
i) Likes the flexibility, features, and self-managed model.
2) Other Calendars
a) Don’t post events to other calendars unless they approach Live
SIMS
1) Current Practices
a) Technology
i) Site driven my PHP, data stored in MySQL
ii) Primitive admin site to add/delete events but only used by the IT staff
b) Event source
i) Certain people (Lety, Kristi, Dean, Professors) email events to Kevin. No standard web or email form. Need to remind people what info to submit
ii) No approval process. No one’s job to manage event content and type
c) Archive
i) Don’t archive but can be useful to see history of events for event providers
ii) Currently only dozen(s) of events per year, so no need to archive
d) Look and Feel
i) Maintain SIMS website look
e) Evaluation of current system
i) Currently no real system in place for events and no dedicated staff
ii) Would like to categorize events (i.e. SIMS only, public)
iii) Would like standard form/method for adding events.
2) Other Calendars
a) Don’t know if SIMS pushes events to other calendars. Occasionally posts other department’s events on SIMS calendar on an ad-hoc basis, would like to do more, but there is no one to be the content manager
3) Features that would be nice to have:
a) sims - only list view
b) would like calendar view
c) different ways to sort events (e.g. type such as social vs. acandemic or seminar)
d) In the add form, have a template that saves previous info so you don't have to type it all in all the time – similar to a profile, when you are logged in there are some default values in the add event form already.
ASUC – Superb (Concerts)
1) Current System
a) calendar is static html
b) Events posted to calendar by the publicity department
c) there is a paper "publicity" form that gets filled out for an event - this is the only storage format for the event data
d) the publicity department takes the information from this form and posts it to the website
e) the publicity department id also responsible for posting the event to the general ucb calendar although it does not often happen
2) no method for archiving past events
3) want to always post their events to the general ucb calendar
4) would like the calendar management tool to be customizable so those with technical know-how can tweak it for their own site e.g. change the font size of different parts of the display
5) Data about an event:
a) date
b) time
c) location
d) directions - mapquest link to get driving directions
e) ticket info - link to tickets site
(1) generally have a ucb student/not student price and can also have both those kinds of tix for different sections of the theater
f) images
g) band url
h) sound clips
i) video clips
6) Calendar features liked:
a) list view and calendar view
b) easy access to different months
c) ability to spotlight an event
d) sort by:
i) date
ii) different kinds of music
e) search for a specific [band] name
RSF
1) an outside company does the basketball calendar (and others)
2) Current system
a) websites use ASP but text is static
b) would like to move towards a mySQl db and allow others to update/add events but just don't have the time to do it
3) Ideas:
a) when you search, rank the events that people visit the most (like Google)
b) Related events, "you might also be interested in"
c) choosing from a list of keywords to use for searching, not just categories