Central Planning Calendar

I will investigate what can be done on the BCAA website to support a central planning calendar.  What kind of information would you like to see in a planning calendar?

Marty,

Here are some comments we collected at our last Theater Fan evening on Jan 20, 2010. The main idea is to create a central planning calendar that all arts organizations can use to show their planned programs in the coming year or so BEFORE THEY ARE LOCKED IN, so they and others can plan around each others ideas--to avoid similar programs happening at similar times after its too late to adjust:

• Allow users to enter a program, date, organization and venue
• Have one color or symbol to represent a "proposed date and program" and another color or symbol to represent a "definite date and program."
• Make sure the big organizations (theaters, orchestras, dance companies etc) are using it-- they're the biggest planning factors for the other theaters and arts orgs
• Have it look like a calendar, versus a long list. Allow for Day View, Week View and List view
• Allow people to choose different filtering options: by discipline (or all); by venue (or all); by region or town (or all)
• Allow people using the calendar to to find contact info on other orgs using the calendar
• Create auto-notification (I need clarification about this). There is also a note about "dropping off if not acted on in a certain time."

I've implemented a Central Planning Calendar that you can start testing with.  I think it includes all of the suggestions you collected from your meeting, except for when items might automatically "drop off" the calendar.  Currently, events will drop off once the date has passed.  I would appreciate feedback from anyone who has ideas about other criteria for when items should drop off.

You can access the Central Planning Calendar here:

http://www.bouldercountyarts.org/planning_calendar

Already seeing a problem with multiple day activities...most theatres will run a show only on the weekends or a monday or thursday. Need to put something in place for that type of option. I will post more items in the next day or so.

I think this is a wonderful idea! It could help lots of the smaller organizations from overlapping.

I have added a few more events and found that I can not add a new venue or choose something generic like-see below. Otherwise for our needs this is getting there.

Thanks Tracy for testing it out and leaving some comments. I spoke to Marty about them and we will try to think of some solutions soon.

Thanks for the feedback.  I added a new field to the submission form called "Other Location" so you can now type in a location if its not in the Venue list.

Marty