Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
[Editor: This is a guest post by Audrey Eschright, the co-maintainer of the Calagator project, Portland’s collaborative tech calendar. tl;dr Calagator is turning 10. There’s a party.]
Next week we’ll be celebrating the 10th birthday of Calagator, Portland’s technology calendar. As time passes, you might not know who created it, who maintains it, or how it came to be. I admit we haven’t always done the best at communicating that—so read on.
But did you know that the whole Calagator goodness is open source? That’s right. Anyone who wants to start a calendar system, slurp events from other hCalendar marked up systems, and make their community a whole heck of a lot more happy, can download Calagator code and build a calendar of their own.
If you’re interested in staying up-to-date on tech events in Portland, then you need look no further than Calagator, the tech calendar for Portland.
But did you know that the whole Calagator goodness is open source? That’s right. Anyone who wants to start a calendar system, slurp events from other hCalendar marked up systems, and make their community a whole heck of a lot more happy, can download Calagator code and build a calendar of their own. Just like Corvalligator. And BendCal. Read More
Whenever anyone asks me “How would I keep up on the events in the Portland tech scene?” I always blurt out two things immediately. The first thing I mention is Upcoming, the social event sharing service currently owned by Yahoo! that was started by Andy Baio who now resides in Portland. There’s a ton of Portland event goodness on there.
The second? Well, that’s Calagator, the home grown open source tech calendar that allows folks to post events directly—or slurp events over from other services like Upcoming. I mean, it’s a calendar aggregator. Calendar aggregator. Calagator. Get it? Hello? Tap tap tap. Is this thing on? Read More
On January 19, 2008, a group of folks got together for a codefest.
Today several of us met during the Code Sprint gathering at CubeSpace to talk and work on the calendar.
Participants: Audrey Eschright, Selena Deckelmann, Igal Koshevoy, Reid Beels, Paige Saez, Daniel Etra, Anselm Hook, and Bill Burcham.
I was a little slow on the uptake. But a few days later, I managed to crank out a post about the “Portland Tech Calendar” project, highlighting:
Last Saturday, the Portland Tech Calendar group dove headlong into a code sprint around the problem of aggregating all of the tech calendars for Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding areas. The result? Calagator.
The group made a great deal of progress during the code sprint. A full recap is available via Google Groups. Highlights are available on the Calagator blog. (That’s right, they have the beginnings of code and a blog. These guys have accomplished more in a weekend than I’ve accomplished in the last six months.)
What came out of that initial meeting was more than code, and more than an app. Much more.
Calagator remains one of my favorite examples of Portland ingenuity, Open-Source teamwork, and the underlying culture of Portland’s Web tech community. And I sincerely hope that they continue doing the same kinds of things they’ve managed to do over the past year.
Happy Birthday, Calagator. And thank you. Not only for aggregating the Portland tech calendar, but for providing a shining example of that which this community is capable.
Portland’s favorite calendar aggregator, Calagator, continues to improve, code sprint after code sprint.
And it’s drawing ever nearer to its 1.0 milestone.
But before Calagator gets there, it’s time for a different kind of sprint, as Audrey Eschright shares:
We’ll be meeting tomorrow starting at 10am at CubeSpace, to kick off the Calagator documentation sprint. I really encourage anyone who has been involved in the development of this project, on any level (including lurking on the mailing list) to stop by, even if you only have an hour or two free. We’ll be working on the Calagator User Guide, and talking about what’s next for the project after we reach our 1.0 milestone.
More details, time, and location for the Calagator documentation sprint can be found, well, on Calagator, of course.
Calagator is an all-volunteer effort to provide a unified calendar for technical communities and user groups in Portland, Oregon. Anyone can contribute information by importing, creating, and editing entries.
For more information, join the mailing list or visit Calagator.
I was going to write a post about the next Calagator code sprint which is going to be held tomorrow, March 15, from 10 AM until 5 PM at CubeSpace. But I’ll be darned if Igal Koshevoy’s note didn’t put that write up to shame.
So, I’m just going to quote liberally from that note.
What’s Calagator?
Calagator is an all-volunteer, open-source project to develop a calendar aggregation system for the Portland technical community. We’re making lots of progress, so please join us in the effort.
Where does the code sprint take place?
We’ll doing another code sprint to work on the project this Saturday, 10am to 6pm at CubeSpace. We usually meet in the FlexSpace (also the place where the Ruby Brigade meetings usually are), but the friendly front desk staff will tell you where to go if you’re not sure.
I’m not much of a “coder,” is there anything I can do to help?
Everyone is welcome to participate, even if you haven’t attended a code sprint before. Experience with Ruby on Rails and agile development is helpful, but you’re welcome to come even if you’re new to these because this is a great way to learn. You do not have to come to the entire event, so swing by if you have time.
I’m standing here at CubeSpace and you guys are nowhere to be found.
If you drop in and we’re not there, you’ll probably find us eating lunch at the “Side Door” bar/restaurant a few blocks away.
Visit the PDX Tech Calendar Google Group to RSVP for the Calagator code sprint.
Calagator, the community project designed to give Portland one tech calendar to rule them all, has quickly begun to show signs of progress. In fact, events have begun populating the calendar already.
How is this possible? Well, in addition to a bunch of hard work by a bunch of talented folks, this rapid development is thanks in no small part to the Calagator team’s choice to adopt microformats for importing event information, specifically hCal.
So let the importing (and bug reporting) begin!
For more information on importing your Portland tech events into Calagator, see the Calagator blog.
Last Saturday, the Portland Tech Calendar group dove headlong into a code sprint around the problem of aggregating all of the tech calendars for Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding areas. The result? Calagator.
The group made a great deal of progress during the code sprint. A full recap is available via Google Groups. Highlights are available on the Calagator blog. (That’s right, they have the beginnings of code and a blog. These guys have accomplished more in a weekend than I’ve accomplished in the last six months.)
Some highlights (Go microformats!):
- The existing group websites we examined can be imported much more easily with the addition of hCalendar markup for the event details. Selena and Daniel created documentation that we can share with event organizers. We discussed the possibility of using a hCalendar generator to provide ready-made HTML to paste into websites and blogs.
- A next step for encouraging hCalendar usage will be to contact individual groups who aren’t using a standardized calendar format, and tell them about our project.
- Paige created a sample email template that can be used to structure event information, for organizers to cc to our system when they send out event announcements. Email seems to be the one tool everyone uses, and this would help with our goal of accessibility.
- Igal and I set up a new Rails application, and added it to a group repository at http://code.google.com/p/calagator/. The application now has a bare bones structure for adding and viewing events. We also decided that event venues were important attributes, and that combining information on venues across events would be highly useful, so users can now add and update venue information as well. We’re using a temporary view scaffolding system to allow us to add and edit information in the database. We’ll develop a more polished interface as we continue.
- In order to begin pulling sample data from websites, Igal and Reid are creating an hCalendar event importer. This can also be used as a model for adding other calendar formats to the system.
- Igal is going to set up our calendar program on a server where people will be able to try it out. Getting feedback early and often will be important to ensuring we’re meeting the needs of our users.
The next code sprint is planned for February 2. That’s Groundhog Day for those of you keeping score at home.
For more information on Calagator, the PDX Tech Calendar project, visit the PDX Tech Calendar Google Group or the Calagator blog.