[Imc-tech] Re: IMC, & a void...

[Paul Riismandel]

WEFT and the public i are each working on different aspects of a 
calendar. Sandra is heading up an effort to put together a community 
calendar, and WEFT a music/entertainment calendar.  There is some basic 
coordination between both orgs.  

The biggest problem is that it is like pulling teeth from a rhino to get 
everyone (bands, groups, venues, etc) to use a web interface and put 
data in themselves, or to even fax in data.  It's still a paper 
organization thing.

A small tech company in town has made an initial offer to WEFT to 
provide a tech backend for inputting this data and turning it into 
multiple pretty outputs -- web, paper, on-air reads, etc.  

--Paul



Sascha Meinrath wrote:

>On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, rosemary braun wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Hey Sascha -- this is probably an old idea, but:
>>
>>There's two problems in CU right now.  One is that, with the demise of
>>the CityView, there is no good weekly comprehensive calendar of events.
>>The other is that there's a whole heap of people out there who aren't
>>going to the IMC website or picking up the public-i because, well,
>>it's those crazy hippie kids and what could I possibly have in common
>>with them?
>>
>>I think that if the IMC produced such a comprehensive calendar, it'd solve
>>the first problem and might draw more people in who won't come otherwise.
>>    
>>
>
>yes, absolutely -- we've talked at length about getting a better calendar.
>i've been negotiating with some university folks about using one of
>theirs, but they haven't decided whether to make the code open source (and
>i suspect it'll take the university another 3-years to come to a decision
>on that).
>
>  
>
>>The webified community calendar is a start, but the problem with that
>>is that it relies on the artists/venues to populate it and so it's not
>>terribly comprehensive.  If the various venues/galleries/theatres/cinemas
>>could be convinced to fax in a schedule of their events for the week,
>>or if someone could get on the phone with them and write it all down,
>>and if some poor sod could take the time to compile them, that'd be a lot
>>more useful to the person who's bored on a Friday night.
>>    
>>
>
>a large group of former cu-cityview staff are meeting regularly to discuss
>options.  i think there are two situations -- the first is that there
>needs to be a weekly calendar; the second is that there should be a
>central on-line place to look for shows info.
>
>  
>
>>Print would be nice, too.  I know that the IMC doesn't have the resources
>>to churn out a public-i on a weekly basis, but how about a flier, with
>>just a schedule grid for music (like the old Octopus one) on the front,
>>and Art/Theatre/Movie listings on the back?  I don't really know what
>>these things cost, but such a listing -- in terms of effort -- could be
>>produced more regularly than a full paper.  I know that distribution can
>>be a nightmare, too; it'd be nice if people could find it in the places
>>that they're used to finding the Octopus, theoretically.
>>
>>But at very least, a comprehensive weekly webified calendar, well-
>>publicized, could really do the IMC -- and CU as a whole -- a lot of good.
>>
>>Whaddaya think?
>>    
>>
>
>i couldn't agree more.   one possibility is to create a web-calendar that
>uses a fairly good content management system and that could be output to a
>flyer directly.  more realistically (perhaps) is to create a calendar
>program that is easy to use, "pretty", easily accessed, etc. and start
>using our connections in the community to point people to it.  this
>wouldn't be too much of a hassle -- but what we're missing is someone with
>tech skills to coordinate the effort.  you're definitly right, we have a
>tremendous opportunity right now to fill a major void; all we need is a
>volunteer.
>
>--sascha
>
>_______________________________________________
>Imc-tech mailing list
>Imc-tech at urbana.indymedia.org
>http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/imc-tech
>  
>