[hackerspaces] The Events List - revisited

[David Raison]

Hi all,

We'd been discussing the events page a while ago and I simply wanted to 
let you in on what I did, around here on hackerspace.lu

As you may have noticed, http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Events has grown 
to a respectable size and even holds some past events.

Now, I know that you're using the Semantic Media Wiki (smw) extension on 
hackerspaces.org and that is exactly what I used to keep our events list 
clean, short and up2date.
The only drawback is that you need to create a wiki page for each event.

So, I created that template where you fill in what info you have on the 
event: https://www.hackerspace.lu/wiki/Template:ExternalEvent
Which, amongst other stuff, contains these properties:

   <!--Let's automate the semantic info-->
       [[StartDate::{{{from}}}| ]]
       {{#if: {{{till|}}} |[[EndDate::{{{till}}}| ]] | 
[[EndDate::{{{from}}}| ]]}}
       [[location::{{{where}}}| ]]
       [[url::{{{url}}}| ]]
       [[Category:ExternalEvent]]
       [[ExternalEvent::yes| ]]
       [[Category:Event]]
   <!-- Semantic end-->

Then, on our frontpage (https://hackerspace.lu) the following query 
produces the nice table advertising future events:

   {{#ask:[[Category:Event]] 
[[StartDate::>{{CURRENTYEAR}}-{{CURRENTMONTH}}-{{CURRENTDAY}}]]
   | mainlabel=Event
   | sort=StartDate
   | order=asc
   | format=broadtable
   | default=There are currently no events sheduled. See our 
[[Calendar]] page for previous events.
   | limit=5
   | outro=See our [[Calendar]] page for a complete list of events and 
additional formats.
   | ? StartDate = From
   | ? EndDate = Till
   | ? Location}}

So, what else is cool about this approach?
* You can have different output formats (cf. 
https://www.hackerspace.lu/wiki/Calendar), like, e.g. RSS, Calendar, 
iCal format (which, admittedly, doesn't really work ;)), etc...
* You may use the so-produced RSS feeds to add the events to your blog 
(though the feed contains the whole wiki page, which looks kind of odd 
in your blog for long wiki pages)

As stated above, 2 problems remain (but maybe someone from this lists 
has an idea how to solve them)

1. There's, to my humble knowledge, no way of having a recurring event. 
I.e. setting a property so that for example a workshop will appear 
weekly in the calendar without the workshop-leader having to edit his 
wiki page each week or even create multiple pages, one for each week.
2. The RSS feed contains too much data. If it would contain only the 
data that is actually requested by the query (but that may be an issue 
that should be discussed with the smw people)

Cheers,
David

-- 
Building a Hackerspace in Luxembourg!
syn2cat Hackerspace.lu A.S.B.L.
http://www.hackerspace.lu
mailto:david at hackerspace.lu
xmpp:kwisatz at jabber.hackerspaces.org
voip: +352 20 333 501
mobile: +43 650 73 63 834 | +352 691 44 23 24


-- 
Building a Hackerspace in Luxembourg!
syn2cat Hackerspace.lu A.S.B.L.
http://www.hackerspace.lu
mailto:david at hackerspace.lu
xmpp:kwisatz at jabber.hackerspaces.org
voip: +352 20 333 501
mobile: +43 650 73 63 834 | +352 691 44 23 24