1. Distributed Management for a Large-Scale Campus Events Calendar
Copyright Elizabeth A. Evans, Kathryn M. Nasser, and Ashlyn Goldberg 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
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Questions for audience:
How many have a campus events calendar?
How many have >1 events calendar?
How many distribute the work of entering events?

2. 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
Questions for audience:
How many have a campus events calendar?
How many have >1 events calendar?
How many distribute the work of entering events?

3. Today’s Presentation What we wanted to do and why Where were we?
Decision-making process
The implementation
Some special notes
Questions and discussion

4. 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?
No one organization had the staffing to enter all units’ events. But, if the work is distributed and the University wants quality control, how can that be handled?
One question we might get is whether having one person enter all events would be, in fact, fewer people than we have working on the calendar now. I might be able to argue either way, but one answer is that units typically want control--over what events are publicized, over the content of the publicity, they want to be able to change events quickly if a speaker cancels, etc. So, not only are we distributing the work, but we’re also distributing, to a large degree, the control.

5. 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

6. Why Change?
1997 Report on the Intellectual Climate (
A 1997 report pointed out in several chapters that the campus ocmmunity needed better access to information about events so faculty could encourage students to attend class-related events, so major events didn’t conflict with other major events, etc.

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

8. “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.”

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

10. “Create better communication among organizers or student and departmental activities (through 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.”

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

12. 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)

13. 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

14. 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!

15. If wishes were horses, what would a campus events calendar do?
Working Group Charge:
If wishes were horses, what would a campus events calendar do?

16. 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

17. 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.)
Overall, publishers have seemed satrisfied with functionality, and we attribute that to the inclusiveness of the project from the very beginning.

18. And from a cast of thousands...
… came consensus!!!

19. Working Group Outcomes
Wish list of “requirements”
Short list of vendors
Demonstrations
Pilots
Everyone understood that there might be some functions we wanted that wouldn’t be available.
The applications under consideration included one written on campus for an individual unit, but we (mostly I) wanted to avoid writing our own application… even if it was a modification of one already written.

20. And…
Ultimately…
A vendor and a product

21. Time Line Discussion began: fall 1998 Working group met: November 1998
Spring and summer 2000: pilots
August 2000: purchased
April 2001: Implementation

22. Preparing for Implementation
Pilot testing by users

23. Preparing for Implementation
Small policy group formed
CIO
Associate vice chancellor for university relations
Project manager
College of Arts and Sciences
News Services

24. Preparing for Implementation
The 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:

25. 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)

26. Preparing for Implementation
Advertise vendor-supplied training
Campus communicators
Working group members
Campus Webmasters
N=85
57 scheduled for 5 sessions over 2 days, but there were plenty of no-shows, of course.

27. The Implementation
Letter from Chancellor to deans, directors, department heads

28. 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.”

29. Implementation Go-live date: April 5, 2001 Reminders to publishers
Additional training sessions for publishers (February and May)

30. 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

31. 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)

32. 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

33. 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

34. (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

35. (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)

36. Special Notes Guest submit: student organizations Athletics
Remedy and ITRC support
Listservers for calendars, topics, departments, etc

37. 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

38. The Future: A Brief List
Test APIs
Transfer responsibility for training to central IT training group

39. Questions? Comments? Comparisons?

40. Contact Information: Elizabeth A Evans, Kathryn M. Nasser, Ashlyn Goldberg,