August 31, 2006
Sara Leavitt, Public Affairs
A little over a year after development began, the new UC Berkeley Calendar Network system should debut this fall. The development team in Public Affairs and Information Services and Technology (IST) is putting the finishing touches on it now.
The network will provide separate calendars — customized in terms of content and look and feel — for colleges, departments, and units throughout the campus. There will be no charge to departments for use of the system, which will be administered by Public Affairs.
Department administrators will use a web-based tool to both create and customize their dynamic, web-based calendars and to manage their events in a central event repository based on a standard data model of an event. The calendar network will enable units to share event information if they so choose, allowing these events to be published in the new Gateway website campuswide calendar and in any other calendar on campus whose owners are interested in including the event.
This first phase of the project rollout will replace the aging Gateway calendar; among the improvements are easy-to-use tabs to display events by category such as Academics, Performing Arts, and Sports. As with the previous event calendar, members of the campus community can submit events for publication on the Gateway calendar. Closely following the launch of the Gateway calendar, a few campus departments will be invited to join the network as "early adopters". Once any remaining details are smoothed out, the network will be opened to units across the campus. The goal will be to have as many colleges, departments, and units as possible join the network, providing one-stop shopping for calendar viewers.
Besides making it easy to spread the word and learn about events on campus, the Calendar Network application is noteworthy as a particularly ambitious and broad collaboration. Several dozen campus units participated in its user-centered design process. Public Affairs is funding the project and IST and Public Affairs have teamed up to develop the application, working with an outside vendor.
On a personal note, I officially joined the project this summer as the Calendar Network Editor/Coordinator in Public Affairs. A couple of years ago, I participated in a calendar data modeling project as an outgrowth of a staff XML class. Little did I know then that this was the genesis of the new UC Berkeley Calendar Network. I am very happy to now have a role in bringing this much-needed new service to the campus community.
Read more about the UC Berkeley Calendar Network project in a previous iNews article, UC Berkeley Calendar Network: A campuswide event calendar project.
[ iNews | Search | IST | UC Berkeley Computing | UC Berkeley ]
iNews: UC Berkeley information technology news channels
Copyright 2006, The Regents of the University of California