Community Calendar Project

The Community Calendar Project

It’s about time someone came up with a way to get all community events in one place so everyone, everywhere can find out what’s going on at any given time, on any given day.

It’s about time creators of those events – the people, agencies and organizations who work so hard to bring quality education, support and entertainment to the community – had a way to get their messages out there effortlessly.

It’s about time the public can find out about the happenings and events they really care about and never miss an important event again.

AND it’s “time” – or the lack of it – that makes this community initiative being spearheaded by the Daily Press so valuable to everyone. This community calendar will SAVE time – for the event creators, the event seekers and the websites and platforms that work to make this information available.

The Daily Press is partnering with Jon Udell of Microsoft to bring this project to Hampton Roads and make it among the first communities in the country to have an easily searchable, FREE database of events available to the public. And we want to get all of Hampton Roads involved. The only thing required to participate is to agree to use an iCalendar formatted calendar on your own websites or to create events through Facebook. That’s it. Participation guaranteed.

What is an iCalendar? Simply, iCalendar is a computer file format that allows Internet users to exchange calendars with other Internet users. iCalendar is used and supported by personal calendars such as Google Calendar, Apple Calendar (formerly iCal), Microsoft Outlook and Hotmail, Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Calendar, and others, and by web content management systems including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others.

Many of you may already use one of these applications to publish your calendars online, and that is great! That means you can already participate in the calendar network we are bringing together. The rest of you can easily convert and get on board.We’ll tell you how.

On April 23 you are invited to a presentation of the Community Calendar Project. Jon will be on hand to tell you what it is, why it matters and how to get involved. The gathering will take place at 6 p.m. at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center, 101 Museum Drive (across from The Mariners’ Museum) in Newport News.

Light refreshments will be served. Get your FREE tickets so we know how many are attending.

Hope to see you there.