Comments on: What, when, and where -- easily updated

Question: What, when, and where -- easily updated

Wild_Eep — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 07:19:31 -0800

Looking for software/service that will let us publish an event's schedule to mobile devices. Difficulty: the schedule isn't decided until the morning of the event.

We hold a BarCamp event twice a year, and want to publish our schedule so that it can be subscribed to via iOS and Android devices. The nature of BarCamp is that the schedule isn't determined in advance. Presenters pick which room/time they are comfortable. It's possible, but not common, that a speaker will change their location/time.

So far, we've considered GuideBook, but found out that their round-trip time isn't tight enough to be useful.

It's essentially a single-day calendar, with time-slots that would be quadruple-booked. We want to be able to update it throughout the day in case of changes, and have those changes pushed out to attendees.

Attendees want a solution that is easy to set up, and stays current throughout the day.

By: devnull

devnull — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 07:28:20 -0800

I don't know, but I'd look at publishing an ics file and tweaking some headers to make sure it's fetched fairly often.

By: BigCalm

BigCalm — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 07:41:38 -0800

What round-trip times would you be looking for and would you expect content to be automatically pushed or be cached on the device somewhere, allowing users to update when they want?

By: furtive

furtive — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 08:49:48 -0800

Yo hold an event twice a year and you can't finalize the schedule until the morning of the event? You expect the schedule to change throughout the day?

I mean this in the nicest way possible but you don't need an app, you need organizational skills.

By: Wild_Eep

Wild_Eep — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:07:48 -0800

you don't need an app, you need organizational skills.

That's the nature of BarCamp.

By: Wild_Eep

Wild_Eep — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:09:34 -0800

I'd like to see round trip times from keying in an update until it is available for people to view (possibly after refreshing their data) of less than an hour. Ideally less than 30 minutes.

By: pwnguin

pwnguin — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 22:55:16 -0800

We run a Barcamp at OSU. The big #10 is next month. Our lead dev wrote a similar app a few years back for OS Bridge and converted to a general purpose app, And yet I cannot fathom how this will actually be worth the effort. You set up a big spool of paper or whiteboard, use big post-it notes, and that is the canonical schedule. This has the benefit of not requiring the internet, phones, or charged batteries. You'd be surprised how many undergrads don't own smartphones.

So, putting that rant aside, it seems to me like you just need a shared calendar, or perhaps an app that provides Android calendar integration if you find gCalendar sync time too slow. It's possible our app could be modified to suit your needs, but it's also possible it doesn't even build on the newest Android SDK. Caveat Emptor.

P.S. I'm curious what powers your website, and whether the source is available. Mediawiki is rather onerous on the spam front and not at all tailored to the needs of barcamps.

By: pwnguin

pwnguin — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 22:58:49 -0800

Specifically, this is the line you'd need to change to poll faster. I've owned an Android for about a week, so you'd have to get ahold of our devs on IRC or something for advice on building the thing.