Add calendar page with Jekyll posts and exportable ICAL feed

[jwflory]

Summary

Add a calendar page to website to showcase events and opportunities to participate

Background

A common, public calendar is a helpful way to bring together the different Working Groups and give people a place to look for what they can get involved with and participate right now. A calendar helps facilitate this and makes it easier for new folks to jump in where the activity and heat is.

@ct-martin implemented a cool Jekyll-based calendar for the FOSS@RIT and RITlug websites. Each event is a Jekyll post with a date and time. There is also an option to specify ICAL syntax to create recurring events (as documented here).

Details

Some examples of this work were done here:

• Events and calendar RITlug/ritlug.github.io#174
• Add Calendar page FOSSRIT/fossrit.github.io#85

Outcome

• Community can help build and curate a calendar
• Easier for new folks to jump on and find a place to get a foothold in the conversation

[jdorfman]

I love it. Superfast.

Community can help build and curate a calendar

How do they add/remove/edit?

[jwflory]

How do they add/remove/edit?

Updating Markdown files in the repository. It requires some comfort in navigating/editing with GitHub web interface or editing locally and committing with git in the command-line. It also needs documentation for the ICAL rules, because that part is funky to write for things like recurring events.

[jdorfman]

@jwflory I think this is a negative. I don't see a lot of people (besides you and me) using this feature. Maybe in the future?

[jwflory]

The best advantage of this is the exportable ICS file created on the website. If that is not useful, then this suggestion can be dropped since it is sort of a Jekyll hack.

Anyone using a calendar app like Google Calendar, Outlook 365, etc. can import the common calendar into their calendar app and subscribe for updates. It is a creative way to maintain a community-curated calendar, but it does have a maintenance cost of complexity. It needs good docs.

[jdorfman]

but it does have a maintenance cost of complexity

That is my fear. I'm a "no", but if others feel strongly then the "I's" have it. =)

[RichardLitt]

At the moment, I have a Google Calendar that I try and update. Perhaps I should just link that on the website? It reduces complexity significantly.

[RichardLitt]

I don't think this is currently linked. @jwflory Any reason for closing this?

[jwflory]

@RichardLitt Ah, I closed this because the original implementation (calendars managed as Jekyll posts) seemed unviable. But embedding a Google Calendar or something else makes sense, and would be easier and more straightforward than this Jekyll-based way. Sorry for the inconvenience of closing. 😅

[RichardLitt]

No worries. :) I should just link it, but I want to wait until we do a bit more work on our usergroups. Hold tight.