Looking to test the use of Google Calendar for maintenance of the competition list for Brew Commune. Thanks to the work of others, maintenance of these dates is a quick and simple task .. so easy that I was able to get these three events and entry deadlines into this calendar in about 2 minutes. I like the Agenda view (see tabs upper right) and click on look for more (bottom left) to get to the event in May. Clicking on the event name gives you the details. If you have your own Google Calendar, it is pretty easy to copy the event to your own calendar for reminders / syncing with your smartphone etc.
There is a way to embed this calendar into the site but I 1) don't have permissions and 2) don't have the web talent to make this happen. But I have asked someone that does to have a look at doing this. I would propose that we replace the content behind the "Events" link with the embedded calendar. The calendar could easily handle meeting details etc. With embedding I think we can also default to the agenda view which is the easiest way to see details.
Further, Google Calendar can be configured to send out e-mail reminders ... if possible, I'd like to see if we can receive that e-mail and create a post from it in one of our forums programatically (no user intervention) ... since most folks only visit the forums, getting reminders posted there automagically seems to me to be a logical place to get notices to everyone (that doesn't add things to their own calendar).
Enjoy ...
Dan
P.S. Tim: This is what I'll bring to the Comp and Style position
