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AboutGettingStarted

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Reid Beels edited this page Aug 4, 2011 · 1 revision

About and Get Started text for the site

Hi There.

Calagator is a unified calendar for the technology community of Portland, Oregon. We are an all-volunteer effort and encourage anyone to import, create, and edit events.

Please:

  • Find Local Events
  • Share Local Events
  • Get Involved

About Us

What

Calagator is a unified calendar for the technology community of Portland, Oregon. We are an all-volunteer effort and encourage anyone to import, create, and edit events. Calagator also refers to the open source software running this site.

Calagator aggregates events so that users can visit a single source to discover interesting activities. Event planners use Calagator to check for possible scheduling conflicts, allowing them to make smarter decisions. Many people check it to find out what they could do this evening.

Who

Calagator grew from a broad technology community discussion about how we find and share local events. The Calagator project started in January 2008 with the formation of a mailing list, followed by an initial code sprint a few weeks later. We chose to build a public, non-commercial software project and website for sharing events.

Development of this project is focused around code sprint meetings. Because we used agile development methods from the start, we were able to share a functioning calendar site at the end of the first meeting. These practices help regular contributors share their knowledge of the project with new developers and reduce the barrier to entry. The application uses Ruby on Rails, but we actively encourage non-Ruby developers to participate. Our code sprints also involve community members who contribute design, project direction, and documentation.

Find Local Events

{Screenshot} means that the particular action would benefit from having a screenshot that can be displayed with a lightbox.

Browse

Search for events at the top of all pages {Screenshot}

Export

  • Subscribe to a list of events with your favorite calendar or feed reader {Screenshot}
  • Send a single event to your favorite calendar {Screenshot}

Share local events

  • Add an event by entering its details
  • Import event(s) by entering a URL to a feed or webpage, or via a bookmarklet
  • Improve content by editing events and venues

Get Involved

Calagator is an all-volunteer, open source project focusing on the Portland, OR technology community. Anyone can participate in its development & functionality; there are no entrance requirements other than enthusiasm and interest for the project goals.

How do you become involved in the project:

Step 1:

Step 2: Choose as many as you like from the following:

Use the site!

  • Learn about & share events (link back learn/share section above)
  • Spread the word! (twitter, your own blog, direct people to the events that you added above)

Help garden the site!

  • Assist with duplicate checking of events and venues
  • Edit content (adding details to events)
  • Correct missing venues and incomplete venue addresses
  • Wiki gardening

Come to code sprints! You don't have to be a programmer; our code sprints are general work sessions, and we also work on design issues, docs, project direction, etc. If you are interested in programming, or learning Ruby or Rails, our pair programming environment is an excellent environment to learn using Agile methods. We'll be glad to help you set things up.

Bugs!

Contribute code! Calagator is a Ruby on Rails web application that can be run on any platform, including strange & exotic platforms from the far PNW. (Redmond, WA.) You can find more details on downloading the source and running it locally at http://code.google.com/p/calagator/wiki/DevelopmentSoftware. Calagator will not run well on a shared hosting account, so we recommend sticking to local development unless you intend to deploy it in a production environment.

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