Looking for a solution for aggregating Calendar data

Hi,

I/we do extensive work with local Council on Community outreach (particularly
around STEM/STEaM), with frequent public events around a theme.

In the past we've had to rely on persons in Council providing us guidance - eg.
"Oh, Matariki's coming up so&so" & "Sign Language Week next month; what tech
can you bring to play?".
But it occurs to me that much of this is repetitive annually (ANZAC), some
regional (School Holidays), and what is idiosyncratic can be pulled from data
sources via Open Data Formats, i.e. iCal & CalDAV from FB, Meetup, EventFinda,
EventBrite.

What is needed - for myself & other Community groups - is a comprehensive,
central semi-authoritative source of data in iCal or CalDAV format we can
subscribe to that would pull & aggregate (vetted) data from said sources.
I've already contacted local Council, as this seems to be something that is
squarely in their wheelhouse, but they're inclined to put this in the too-hard
basket, as they cannot see the benefit outweighing the cost.

Is there an existing system out there (Libre or otherwise) that I could to
bootstrap this for PoC, possibly make a case for Council to sponsor this as a
project for an upcoming GovHack event?
Presently I have a simple Google Cal that I load events into, as to most of my
Council contacts (creating enormous duplication-of-effort), but this is far
from an appropriate solution.

Snap... similar reason involving meetups... I've got to the point where I
was going to bring it up to the NZOSS council as a service type thing,
which I shall do today!

Carl

Rest of post

Dave pointed to "Federated Calendaring" that seems a more appropriate term than
"Aggregated".
https://gitea.polonkai.eu/gergely/calendar-social

The leading solution seems to be Atlassian Confluence Team Calendars:
https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/team-calendars

I really do feel this should be owned/maintained by an impartial body, since
this is a Community service. i.e. govt/council being the patron.

The play would look something like:
* fill in static events - i.e. New Years day tends to fall on the same date
every year
* load variable events by region - i.e. School Holidays, ANZAC
* aggregate/federate events from Open Data Sources (iCal/CalDAV/RSS form FB,
etc) for local activities. Reflects changes upstream, such as cancellations,
etc.
* punters subscribe to n feeds, or log in to create accounts where they can
compile customized feeds (i.e. Aucklanders not all that interested in
Wellington Anniversary Weekend)

If this is a tool that can be bootstrapped here to be picked up/sponsored by
govt via GovHack, that's a win IMHO.

also sprach Jaco <<email obscured>> [2018-08-01 11:46 +1200]:
> What is needed - for myself & other Community groups - is
> a comprehensive, central semi-authoritative source of data in iCal
> or CalDAV format we can subscribe to that would pull & aggregate
> (vetted) data from said sources.

I'll go out on a limb and say that actually providing this will be
trivial. The major issue I see is that you'll need to get the
various providers to actually publish standards-compliant ICS files,
and keep those updated.

Given how Microsoft Office365 doesn't even include timezones in
their data, and Zoom's understanding of ICS is not in line with the
standard — these being just two examples — I am not particularly
confident that you'll be able to feed whatever platform you find
with usable data, actually.

Does anyone have any better ideas that don't involve writing
screen-scrapers and ICS hacks for various sources?

Rest of post

1.09kb

From a public holidays point of view there is ...

http://apps.employment.govt.nz/ical/public-holidays-all.ics

Having something similar for nationally recognised 'weeks' such as Sign
Language Week or Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori should fall into the realm of
one of the government departments .. finding which one that is *should*
be the hardest part.

I'm not sure how locked in school holidays are as standard throughout
the country/regions/systems/levels etc. But it would be great to throw
that at the Ministry of Education to see if they can build/provide a
standard ical feed of school terms.

Cheers,

Rest of post

On Tue, 31 Jul 2018, at 5:33 PM, Ian Beardslee wrote:
> I'm not sure how locked in school holidays are as standard throughout
> the country/regions/systems/levels etc. But it would be great to throw
> that at the Ministry of Education to see if they can build/provide a
> standard ical feed of school terms.

Already done.

http://education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/school-terms-and-holidays/#ical

On Tue, 2018-07-31 at 17:36 -0700, Simon Green wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Jul 2018, at 5:33 PM, Ian Beardslee wrote:
> > I'm not sure how locked in school holidays are as standard
> > throughout
> > the country/regions/systems/levels etc. But it would be great to
> > throw
> > that at the Ministry of Education to see if they can build/provide
> > a
> > standard ical feed of school terms.
>
> Already done.
>
> http://education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/school-terms-and-holid
> ays/#ical

Ohhh .. I'll plan on adding those to our standard build.

Back in the day, John Udell embarked on aggregating calendar feeds as part of
his "Elm City" project. Some of his notes are probably still relevant:

https://blog.jonudell.net/2008/10/13/celebrating-icalendars-10th-anniversary-the-best-is-yet-to-come/
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/10/a-lesson-in-civics-public-data.html
etc.

If I was building this I'd probably do a bunch of scrapers via
https://morph.io/ or similar that could each target a source of events and
normalise them to iCalendar
(https://devguide.calconnect.org/Appendix/Standards/ ). Then pipe the various
feeds via CalDav or similar
https://devguide.calconnect.org/CalDAV/introduction/

Cheers
J

> On 1/08/2018, at 12:12 PM, Jaco <<email obscured>> wrote:
>
> Dave pointed to "Federated Calendaring" that seems a more appropriate term
than "Aggregated".
> https://gitea.polonkai.eu/gergely/calendar-social
>
> The leading solution seems to be Atlassian Confluence Team Calendars:
> https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/team-calendars
>
> I really do feel this should be owned/maintained by an impartial body, since
this is a Community service. i.e. govt/council being the patron.
>
> The play would look something like:
> * fill in static events - i.e. New Years day tends to fall on the same date
every year
> * load variable events by region - i.e. School Holidays, ANZAC
> * aggregate/federate events from Open Data Sources (iCal/CalDAV/RSS form FB,
etc) for local activities. Reflects changes upstream, such as cancellations,
etc.
> * punters subscribe to n feeds, or log in to create accounts where they can
compile customized feeds (i.e. Aucklanders not all that interested in
Wellington Anniversary Weekend)
>
> If this is a tool that can be bootstrapped here to be picked up/sponsored by
govt via GovHack, that's a win IMHO.
> ――
> View topic http://groups.nzoss.org.nz/r/topic/41at1WrBdRO5zxB6XsUex1
> Leave group mailto:openchat@groups.nzoss.org.nz?subject=Unsubscribe
>
> Start groups https://OnlineGroups.net

Jonathan Hunt
http://huntdesign.co.nz
PO Box 1062, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand

Rest of post

Hey,

Sadly Atlassian Confluence Team Calendars isn't open source. There are
a number of options out there which are open source which allow you to
bring in external calendar feeds, and then make them available. A
little bit more work would be needed around a management frontend...

I use and contribute to DAViCal, but there's others out there.

Cheers,
Andrew

Rest of post

Jon Udell suggests: https://twitter.com/judell/status/1025163406867816449

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Looking for a solution for aggregating Calendar data

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