AutomaticCalendaring

Read about an event, think it's interesting ? You say: "put that on my calendar," and so it is !

And it works not only with events, but with the entire calendar of organizations or individuals. If an event is rescheduled, it's automatically updated on your calendar. If new events are created, they appear on your calendar.

You can think of it as "RSS for the calendar." Once you've subscribed to a feed, you keep getting updated. You can publish your own calendars. You share what you are doing, when you're doing it. If you want to see what your friends are up to, you check their calendars. If you want to see them, and go to a neat event, you can piggy back the occasions.

Status

The technology already exists; it's called [LionLocal]iCalendar, and it's described in an [LionLocal]RFC ([LionLocal]RFC2445). It is based on [LionLocal]vCalendar, a cousin of [LionLocal]vCard.

Note that (a) when.com (they were bought by Netscape not long before Netscape was bought by AOL) supported a process like this during the bubble days, though it was based on their hosting, not OpenFormat-s; (b) the big challenge becomes AttentionManagement - you quickly end up with piles of events available for scanning, but you don't want to do that, you want some sort of RelevanceRanking to put the most-likely-to-attend choices near the top of the list. --BillSeitz

Some programs that support iCalendar:

[LionLocal]iCalShare is a repository of public calendars. For example, you can [WWW] subscribe to Japanese holidays. If you've got FireFox with the Mozilla Calendar plugin, you just click on a "webcal" URL and it automatically adds it to your calendar.

When will iCalendar be mainstream?

(written: 2004-12-05)

By "mainstream," I mean: used by most groups that are doing any sort of calendaring.

Adoption so far is actually poor. You can tell, because you aren't using it yourself. The technology has been invented and integrated, but it hasn't really been picked up by the public yet.

This is likely because there's a lack of good tools for managing public calendars that publish to iCalendar. Perhaps we could make a MoinMoin plug-in to generate an iCalendar description from specially formatted text? (Feature write-up should probably go on [WikiFeatures]iCalendarSupport.)

Also, calendaring programs publish to WebDAV ([LionLocal]WebDAV) servers. WebDav servers haven't really seen major penetration yet. Apache has built-in DAV support, but it's not enabled by default.

The software that support iCalendar just isn't there yet. iCalendar only works well on Mac and Linux; on Windows, you're stuck using one of the very beta Mozilla products, and those just don't work that well.

Also, there's not any good subscription-management tools for the enterprise. Right now, enterprise calendaring is impossible with iCalendar. Even small-business setups are pretty hard and unstable. Only through groupware such as Exchange and Lotus Notes can that be done, at the moment.

Perhaps most importantly, there's just not much publicity and support.

It takes time for people to learn new ideas. I learned about [LionLocal]RSS in 2003. My coworkers learned about it this year (2004). Most people on the street would have no idea what I meant were I to say, "RSS." [WWW] RSS was invented in the period roughly 1997-1999. Almost all blogging software supports producing RSS feeds, I guess around 2003. (Just guessing here.)

The path for iCalendar will be a bit different because:

It's probably because of the long history of use in business that it is integrated into official productivity office programs: You don't need to explain to anybody the importance of calendaring.

But it's probably because the UI is hard, that it's not in most SocialSoftware.

Fortunately, I think all we need to do now is: (A) Publicize, and (B) integrate "less-than-ideal" interfaces into SocialSoftware.

Thus, I am estimating 2-3 years for mainstream adoption, rouchly equivalent to the 2004 level for RSS.

That is, in either 2006 or 2007:

I think it'll be closer to the early side (mid-to-end 2006,) because calendaring will impact whold organizations, not just individuals (like blogs.) So: Once it starts spreading, it will spread quickly. (RSS, on the other hand, is a one-person-to-one-person affair, mainly.)

: Calendaring has a much bigger problem than something like RSS. The secret of RSS is that it's "PublishAndSubscribe" ie. has reduced (one-way) co-ordination costs. I decide to publish without caring who's subscribing. Subscribers have all the cost of co-ordinating with me. Calendaring seems different. Sure I can publish what I'm doing without caring about who's subscribing. But "you knowing what I'm doing" isn't really the problem calendaring needs to solve. In fact, what is the pain it's meant to be addressing? Calendaring is really about getting several people co-ordinated in the same place or using the same resources at the same time. That necessarily requires two-way costs. I have to reply and you have to respond. We must both listen to each other.

: This kind of negotiation is done well in wiki, of course, where you can set up pages representing meetings and people can sign up if they're going, and other people can see who's going and decide if they want to go to. That's the killer point of calendaring. By contrast, automatic transfer of a time and date into a personal diary seems like it's addressing the wrong kind of pain. If you care enough about the meeting to go, the extra pain of writing down the date is trivial.

: -- PhilJones

I don't understand. iCalendar is published the same way as RSS. You put your data into a file, and people subscribe to it.

You feel that people have to reply and respond to coordinate. Then how do you explain festivals? Is there a negotiation between 1,000 people, for a festival? But it's not just on the large scale. The Seattle Python Interest Group meets once a month. Some times I go, some times I don't, but there's always roughly 5-10 people in attendence. We don't sit down and hash it out, all the time. And the times that 3-4 people do sit down and hash it out, I'm not interested, and not involved. I just wait for them to say when it is, and where it is, and then I decide whether I am going to go or not.

This means that I don't have to track some obscure discussion about who has to pick up kids at what time, and from what school, yadda yadda yadda. I can just say: "Stick it on the calendar when it is, and I'll go if I feel like it."

As it is: There are hoards of groups that meet in Seattle, and I have no idea when or where, I just know that I am interested in knowing what my options are. If Seattle Wireless is meeting this weekend, that's something I'd like to be casually aware of. If Seattle XP programmers, or Seattle Java programmers, or Seattle C++ programmers, or Seattle Python programmers, or the Seattle Bloggers, or the Seattle Web Communications Meetup, or the Seattle Wikipedians, or whatever are meeting up this weekend, I'd like that on the periphery of my consciousness.

AutomaticCalendaring is the tool that makes it possible. There is no other way, outside of hiring a secretary to go look up and keep track of all those people meeting and all their websites, and compiling a report for me daily.

The key fallacy is this: "If you care enough about the meeting to go, the extra pain of writing down the date is trivial." That's just not true in my case. I go to meetings all the time, that I learned about on a whim. And there are many meetings that I have wanted to go to, but simply keeping track of the 20 organizations I want to see is overwealming. If I had casual awareness of them, I would go. And I know I speak for several others as well.

Hyper Social

This automatic calendaring is important because it will mark the HyperSocial era that will transition into the HiveMind (see Part 2 of this page for more on that.)

Simply: People will have high awareness of all the events happening around them that they are interested in. Right now, we lose 95% of the critical awareness of what happens when, because we're bad at keeping dates and events and places in our head. Meetings we'd be terribly excited to go to and talk at, they happen right outside our doors, while we're sipping tea at home, and we're just oblivious. I know that, some time this month, there will be a bloggers meetup. Another time, there will be a [LionLocal]SeattleWiki meetup. Another time, a [LionLocal]SeaPig meeting. All these meetings happening, but it's just this general haze in my (and others') mind about just what happens when and where.

With automatic calendaring, this will not be an issue any more. We will be able to see, at a glance, what will be happening where.

There will be an explosion of physical meetings, coordinated over the Internet. Suddenly, people will look at their events calendars, and they will be completely full of activities, events. It'll be more jam packed then a healthy college events catalog. And it'll be custom made for just you: It will be completely impossible to attend even a fraction of what excites and interests you. (This means that you will choose to focus on some particular organ; This leads to your understanding of playing an active role in the HiveMind.)

When people meet people, things that are really important will rise, and things that are not so important will fall. There will be a regenesis of wisdom.

At the very least, the myth that the Internet makes people a-social will be put to rest.

This is silly. All you need is a paper pocket organizer with a calendar, a pda, or a cellphone with a calendar and the ability to sync with your computer, and then remembering events that you hear about is no problem because you write them on your pda. Moreover, people already have and use these little portable calendars, so if there was going to be some major revolution in social behavior we would have already seen it. BTW, nobody really believes that the internet is supposed to make people anti-social. It's just supposed to change social behavior in some way, that it's certainly done that. -MichaelToomim

Nope. Sorry. Keeping notes takes too long. Also, those little PDAs are far more sparse then, say, CellPhones. I certainly don't have one. Further: The idea that there would be a major revolution in social behavior is already justified by meetup.com. But it's an incomplete revolution: We need the automatic distribution of calendaring information.

When we have automatic calendaring, most every group publishing their calendars (think RSS feeds), and PervasiveComputing, everyone with a PDA, we will see this part of this stage completed. From there, we continue with live GPS broadcasting and interest registration, so when you walk out for lunch, you can see who shares your interest in a 1 mile radius, and is interested in talking.

I'm glad to hear that the status quoue is that the Internet isn't supposed to make people anti-social. When I started using the Internet in 1993, I was told that it was anti-social, and that geeks were having social problems because they were typing into the computer all the time. The notion is laughably absurd now. I'm happy that society has conceeded this argument. It means we're moving forward.

-- LionKimbro 2004-12-31 21:47:30

Actually, I hear quite a few claims that the Internet makes people anti-social. Or at least, that's the way it was. I don't hear them so often, any more. (This is part of the ongoing geek-ification of public culture.) If I come across some, I'll try to remember to come over here and mark them.

As for "all we need to do is write them in our PDA,..." ...I strongly disagree.

That's sort of like saying: "RSS doesn't mean anything. All you need to do is make bookmarks of the blogs you are interested in, and then visit each one, every day."

The thing is, we don't want to visit them every day. We only want to visit them when they have a new post, and we feel like reading them. RSS and feed readers make it so it happens all in the background, once we've done it. We don't have to go read through the list of links everyday, we just fire up our reader. The machines take over for the rest.

Similarly with calendaring. Organizations have events, both those that are recurring, and those that are scheduled at different times. It's a hassle to receive a message, pull out the PDA, and transcribe the message. There are hundreds of events taking place in Seattle this month that I would be interested in, but I don't write them down because the likelihood that I will go to them is very small. The net result is that I only write down things that I know for sure that I will go to.

Which means that if it's Saturday, and if I feel like doing something, I have to open up the newspaper and look around there. All the news of events that are customized to my interest- those are all unavailable to me. (Unless they happen to be in the newspaper, and that's very rare.)

Yah, you get it? In a given weekend, there are many many many things I would be interested in, I just didn't write them all down, because if I did write every event that I could possibly be interested in, I'd be writing in my calendar pretty much full-time. It's a massive chore to be writing down event after event after event, especially draining when you know that you're only going to actually attend one or two of the 50 things you wrote down.

(You seeing it?)

Say I'm interested in the Python Interest Group. They have monthly meetings, and occasionally, they spend a weekend in code sprint. Am I really going to take the time to write that all down? No; I have only casual interest.

Then there's the Wikipedia meetups. I don't know when they're going to meet-up next in Seattle. Sometime January, February? Do I really want to stay in the loop? I'm interested in the Wikipedia meetups, but I don't feel like following the mailing list, and I don't feel like hitting their page a bunch, just so I can write down a calendar date. A calendar date that I might use. I mean: I may feel like going out with my girlfriend that day, too- so is it worth all that effort, to keep track of what they're doing, and read discussion about when they might meet? No, it's not. I don't want to follow their mailing list. I don't want to transcribe no dates. I don't want to keep track of the web page. I don't even want to think about them.

I just want to know when they're having a meeting, and have that day magically appear on my calendar.

Then there's the Seattle XP programmer's group. I don't want to follow their web page either. I just have a vague feeling that I'd like to go to one of their meetings. I don't want to mark them out on my calendar by hand (or by PDA.) And what if they change their meeting date? I don't want to have to think about that. I don't want to have to communicate with them. I don't want to have to update my PDA or calendar or whatever. I just want the dates to magically shift on the calendar.

I want to wake up one Saturday morning, and see:

"Today's events:"

Right? Do you see it?

I mean, do you have the time to write a billion things into your PDA that interest you, but that you're probably not going to go to?

Probably not!

I don't know a single person who does.

But I know many people who would love to know, casually, at a glance, what kinds of events are going on in their area today and the next day.

I don't keep track of all these groups. I don't keep track of when Seattle Wireless meets. I don't keep track of the Python group meeting dates, which constantly shift. I don't keep track of the coding sprint dates. I don't keep track of my favorite organizations evening meets. I don't keep track of all this stuff. I don't want to keep track of all this stuff.

I just want to know it when it is time.

I think I have every reason to believe that when this technology becomes available, we will see a sudden burst in public meetings, and stronger public institutions.

And by public institution, I mean NGOs like Wikipedia, KDE, GNOME, Seattle Wireless, etc.,. Not government organizations.

Moreover, people already have and use these little portable calendars, so if there was going to be some major revolution in social behavior we would have already seen it.

First, I think it's clear that AutomaticCalendaring is not PDA's. It's not anything where you have to consciously transcribe something in. (The only thing you do is a one-time sign-up to an organization or individual's feed.)

I think I've also argued why there will be a major revolution in social behavior.

But I want to point something out: Meetup.com.

Meetup.com has dramatically altered the social landscape. Observe the Howard Dean campaign.

Think about what the type of argument you've posed against AutomaticCalendaring would have said about Meetup.com:

"Meetup.com is rediculous, and won't make any major social change. If people want to meet up, they can just call each other on the phone, arrange a time and a place, and meet there. So, why would there be any change using something like meetup.com?"

Right? See?

What it misses is that you can pore over massive registry of meetings, and you get the reminder system, and all sorts of stuff, very cheaply. And just that change alone has dramatically altered how people meet.

AutomaticCalendaring and SpatialPersonalNetworking devices will have even greater effect.

Physical Meetings

We are still in an era where there are many many advantages to physical meeting over electronic meeting. You can [CommunityWiki]OverHear at a physical meeting. You can draw. You can use [MeatballWiki]ParaLanguage. You can quickly round up 5-people to talk.

While this is certainly in our tech future online (see [CommunityWiki]OverHear, [CommunityWiki]ConcentrationTimes), it will be advantageous to use AutomaticCalendaring and physical meeting until we get there.

An interesting question is when we'll stop substantially physically meeting:

(Looking to the far future, say 15-30 years, it appears that limitations of SpaceAndTime are fundamental, deciding who can meet with who when. But SplitAttention and DigitalDoubles (ArtificialIntelligence simulations representing you and your intelligence, predicted and popularized in SerialExperimentLain) may compensate for that.)

When?

In LionsTimelineFrom2004, LionKimbro (immediate writer) put the technology integrated into popular software around 2005-2006, people beginning to use it somewhere between 2006-2007, and widespread use by 2008.

last edited 2008-01-17 18:22:35 by 82