Distributed Management for a Large-Scale Campus Events Calendar

Copyright Elizabeth A. Evans, Kathryn M. Nasser, and Ashlyn Goldberg 2003. This work is the intellectual property of the authors. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the authors. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires

written permission from the authors. To obtain permission, write Elizabeth A. Evans, evans@unc.edu.

Distributed Management for a Large-Scale Campus Events Calendar

Elizabeth A. Evans, Kathryn M. Nasser, and Ashlyn Goldberg

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Today’s Presentation

• What we wanted to do and why

• Where were we?

• Decision-making process

• The implementation

• Some special notes

• Questions and discussion

The Question:

How can events be publicized so that the public (on- and off-campus) can

easily find them, but so that the work of entering the events is distributed?

Beneficial Side Effects

• Community-building among event publishers

• Collaboration between central IT and many, many other departments (a UNC initiative, not just an IT one)

• An appearance of more cohesiveness to the outside world

Why Change?

1997 Report on the Intellectual Climate (http://intlife.unc.edu/orig_report/toc.html)

“There is no central clearinghouse for information about upcoming events. Students often feel uninformed and unwelcome at campus programs.”

“Create a Central Clearinghouse for Intellectual Events that will receive information about all events at the University and distribute this information efficiently to students, faculty, and staff.”

“Include more information about the theme or purpose of events that are listed on calendars in campus publications.”

“Create better communication among organizers or student and departmental activities (through e-mail networks and other contacts), so that the leaders of various organizations know what others are planning and when the events of other groups will take place.”

Emphasis in intellectual climate report was on the campus community, but we broadened that to include the public.

What Were We Doing?

• Home page had link to calendar list– different formats– no UNC Chapel Hill look-and-feel– URLs might die without warning

• Link on home page featured an event of the week (and still does)

First Steps:Create working group of people who

sponsor and/or publicize events• Academic Affairs Library• Black Cultural Center• Bulls Head Bookshop

• Center for Public Service

• Center for Slavic Studies

• Center for Undergraduate Excellence

• College of Arts and Sciences

• Faculty/Staff newspaper

• FPG Child Development Center• Friday Center for Continuing

Education• General Alumni Association

• Health Sciences Library

• Office of Institutional Effectiveness

• Office of the Provost

First Steps:Create working group (cont’d)

• Playmakers Theatre

• School of Pharmacy

• School of Public Health

• Student Affairs

• Student Body Vice President

• Student radio station

• Student Union

• UNC News Services

• A few techies for good measure

• And anybody else!

Working Group Charge:

If wishes were horses, what would a campus events calendar do?

A Few Items from the Wish List:

• Distribute workload of adding events

• Require certain fields

• Categorize events

• Standardize some fields

• Archive/delete old events automatically

• Handle multiday events

• Comply with standards

• Use kerberos

• Use a database

• Run under Unix

• And many, many more

True Confessions, Though...

• Not everyone on the mailing list attended the meetings.

• We suspect not everyone on the mailing list read the meeting notes.

• (We were not surprised.)

And from a cast of thousands...

… came consensus!!!

Working Group Outcomes

• Wish list of “requirements”

• Short list of vendors

• Demonstrations

• Pilots

And…

Ultimately…

A vendor and a product

Time Line

Discussion began: fall 1998

Working group met: November 1998

Spring and summer 2000: pilots

August 2000: purchased

April 2001: Implementation

Preparing for Implementation

Pilot testing by users

Preparing for ImplementationSmall policy group formed

• CIO

• Associate vice chancellor for university relations

• Project manager

• College of Arts and Sciences

• News Services

Preparing for ImplementationThe policy group worked on

• Subscription add-on (requested by SBP)

• Graphics design

• Naming conventions

• Starting list of calendars, topics, interest groups

• Master calendar guidelines (very simple: http://www.unc.edu/calendar/documentation/publishers/master.html)

Preparing for Implementation

Implement decisions

• Required fields

• Renaming of fields (type of event became title)

• Topics, interest groups, calendars

• Setting up directory space for supplemental files (documentation, splash pages, etc)

Preparing for Implementation

Advertise vendor-supplied training

• Campus communicators

•Working group members

• Campus Webmasters

• N=85

The Implementation

Letter from Chancellor to deans, directors, department heads

Extract“The technology employed to create the calendar enables us to have individual calendars for each school, even down to the departmental level. But more importantly, it will feature a master calendar of events with broad interest to the public.

“Although the calendar is a work in progress, we need you to begin using it and entering events on it now. A number of people in schools and units across campus have been trained to use the calendar and to enter data, and I ask that you encourage your calendar designee to begin posting events immediately.”

Implementation

• Go-live date: April 5, 2001

• Reminders to publishers

• Additional training sessions for publishers (February and May)

Ongoing Work• Training (one-on-one and group)

• Evaluate calendars, topics, interest groups (revise as needed)

• Publishers’ meetings (about every quarter)

• Online documentation (publishers/managers)

• Technical support (mostly for publishers)

• Public support (mostly for Qs about the calendars)

• Documentation for users

• Testing and installation of new versions

What Makes a Distributed Model Work for Us?

• Administrator for each calendar to add and manage users

• Extremely good options for permissions• Ability to have subordinate calendars and a master

calendar• Cross-posting functions between any calendars

(with permission)

What Made the Process Work?(We Think…)

• Many, many people involved from beginning• Faculty support• Administrative support• Staff support• Student support• ie. Almost everybody wanted a campus events

calendar

Don’t Throw Caution to the Wind!

• The more people, the longer it takes

• Needs change, the calendar will, too

• Technology changes, the calendar will, too

• We struggle to hook the hold-outs

• There are urgent requests to enter events

(Cautions…)

• Total support (training, first line support, etc) should be provided early

• The isolates (centers, institutes, programs on our campus) don’t fit in a neat organizational scheme

(Cautions…)

• Vendors can always do anything you want--today

• Techno-phobes do exist. Some of them publicize events.

• It takes time and effort for the calendar to become instinctive (get it on the radar screen)

Special Notes

• Guest submit: student organizations

• Athletics

• Remedy and ITRC support

• Listservers for calendars, topics, departments, etc

The Future: A Brief List

• Built-in venue information• Parking• Formal evaluation of topics, calendars, interest

groups• Improve searching: recommendations to vendor• Test import/export tool

The Future: A Brief List

• Test APIs

• Transfer responsibility for training to central IT training group

Questions? Comments?Comparisons?

http://www.unc.edu/calendar

Contact Information:

Elizabeth A Evans, evans@unc.edu, 919-962-6344Kathryn M. Nasser, ryn@unc.edu

Ashlyn Goldberg, ashlyn_goldberg@unc.edu