Back in the day (late 1990’s), our CMS was a Microsoft FrontPage web site with a Microsoft Access database backend (those were good times..). Along with our directory of Canadian environmental links and media database of news articles, we also used Access to manage upcoming environment-related events from across Canada. To say the least, it was tedious and time-consuming to manage.
In early 2005 (after testing and battling many events management systems), I stumbled upon Upcoming.org (wiki p.), a free social events calendar service that allowed people to share their events with their friends as well promote the events that they are organizing. Most significantly, listing the location of the event was seamlessly easy as online map services (Yahoo! Maps or Google Maps) were tied into the application. As well, events could be easily added to your own personal calendar (Outook,iCal, Yahoo! Calendar, Google Calendar, 30 boxes). Finally, emailing your friends, tagging events with keywords and searching events by category, venue, and even by the events that your mutual friends are going to are some of the most useful features that I have found (the service is also tied into Flickr where you can share photos from the event). The company eventually got bought out by Yahoo late 2005 and was renamed to simply “Upcoming” (http://upcoming.yahoo.com/)
I stared and stared at this service for quite some time (a week or two), analysing and asking myself how thegreenpages.ca network could utilize this service. It wasn’t until I discovered “creating Upcoming groups” where people could join based on a particular theme, add their own events, and stay up-to-date with the latest upcoming events from that group. I then started by creating thegreenpages – Canada Upcoming group, and then thegreenpages – Alberta Upcoming group, etc. AND I then figured out how to post Upcoming group events on a web page using the Upcoming Badge!!!!….and thus, the rest is history.
Below is a list of our Upcoming events groups:
Finally, the BONUS! Each Upcoming group has it’s own RSS feed which we attempted to do in Access/FrontPage (ewww ouch!). Upcoming is a free and very integrated service with our other favourite online apps (Flickr asformentioned, Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps, calendar applications etc.)
Share your events with us!
Send us the details (name of event, date, location, description, web site if any) of your community event. If you already have an Upcoming.org account, tag your event with “thegreenpages” for us to find and we’ll add it to our network.
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Eventful – http://eventful.com/
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iPartee – http://www.ipartee.com/
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and of course, Good’ol Facebook events
