a.k.a. Event Planning While Negotiating the Leaping Between the Ivory Towers of Social Networks
['cause even those that sorta exist kind of look like this...]
So, I’m in the midst of organizing and trying to promote BarCampBlock, using many of the tools at my disposal:
- PB Wiki - ’cause we organize BarCamp on a wiki…that’s just what we do…
- Eventbrite - it’s a really great way to keep track of the actual attendee numbers and follow up later if anything goes awry or needs to be clarified (venue change, etc.). It’s really awesome for events you are collecting a fee for as well.
- Facebook Events - because they have that oh so powerful Social Graph there…and my ‘friend list’ is well over 700 people.
- Upcoming - because it is THE place to post your events in SF.
- The Squidlist - because this is ACTUALLY THE place to post your events in SF. (still awaiting approval)
Of course there is more and all sorts of helpful friends have suggested them to me…but I don’t want to know of YET ANOTHER web app or social network for events or posting board or blog…I want to organize my damned event! Unfortunately, managing the multitude of options for posting this event has become a full-time job.
Now, NO…I don’t want someone to come along and say either of the following, either:
- “Our firm will post and manage your event on the multitude of sites out there for you for a small fee.”; or
- “We have a new network that aggregates all of the other event data so that you only have to post once.”; or
- “Hi, on OUR LARGE LOOMING UNNAMED NETWORK, we have many independent event apps that are deeply integrated into our platform.”
- “We have a new app that posts your event to all of the multitude of sites out there and manages your updating for you.”; or even
- “You can use Yahoo!Pipes to create a management tool to help you upload and manage your event on multiple sites.”
Nope. I don’t want more of this or that…what is out there is just fine for me. Everyone does a fine job of doing what they promise to do. I don’t want widgets or exported xml files or deep integration. What I DO want is these sites to stop competing for my attention and to start bridging between them. I don’t know how? OpenID maybe? Oauth perhaps? Microformats? Brian did a fine post about this conundrum over here that explains some of the technology of building those bridges.
And It’s not for anyone to be owned or monetized or patented or famous for or any other type of ego/industrial complex type of a solution either. This needs to happen for me…who is representing your customer who is creating a great deal of the value you ‘own’ on your network or site or app. Consider it a ‘gift‘ that shows your ‘gratitude’ for our implicit partnership towards creating a better world.
C’mon…start playing with one another or else we’ll just have to protest by doing something like - crap, I don’t know. In fact, I feel totally disempowered to do anything but hate you all deeply and pray everyday for your ivory towers to fall into the sea someday soon. Maybe I AM open to another solution…the solution that cares about my experience and works hard to create those bridges rather than padding one’s own network.
6 Comments
In organizing BarCampMilwaukee2 I’m seeing the same things. Last year we had a long wiki page with links to everywhere we promoted or mentioned it. Many one-off event calendars (Yet Another Calendar!) as well as the usual suspects of Upcoming, Eventful, PB Wiki, and this year I put it on Facebook and got a ton of people to rsvp, totally in line with what you hear about Facebook’s popularity I guess. I noticed you didn’t mention Eventful, which supposedly syndicates out your event info for others to use. Long term, seeing these things all being able to “bridge” each other and share information, and then compete on FEATURES instead of DATA would be ideal.
I run into the same problem even with Wiki Wednesday, which is a much smaller event. People RSVP on one place or another, or on all of them, but with different usernames, so I can’t tell if I’m going to have 10 or 30 people.
Oh and by the way you left off the private emails, IMs and the Google Group for organizing. We haven’t really solved our social software problems, even if the tentacles of our networks sometimes intertwine a little bit easier than they used to.
Someone is going to say the word “microformats” in about 5 seconds aren’t they?
Rock on, Tara.
If you think that SF is bad, Seattle is really, really fragmented. I have to use all of the above + Meetup and WetPaint. I love Upcoming, but people up here inexplicably use Meetup as well. Thank god we all agree on Flickr.
I wanted to stick with email for a brunch I’m doing post Gnomedex, but realized that 1/3 of the folks I don’t actually have “real email” addresses for, so I’m Facebook bound.
This shit is killing me. Can you and Oberkirch sit down and figure this out?
P.S. Please bring some engineers.
Cheers,
Randy
i totally feel your pain, tara. i’ve been diving into the promotion of my musician friends over the past few months, and i’ve only found a few services that do even a decent job of cross-posting either events or media to brother (from another mother) services.
so as much as i want to get the word out about the bands, i really don’t want to extend into dealing with any more services. it is truly painful to manage the number i manage now.
so here’s an idea: create a BtoB service that acts as the middle-man (bridge) for event, photo & video services. do all the dirty work of negotiating the opening of APIs, have each similar service have equal access to each other’s APIs, and come up with a business model that rewards the participating companies in some incremental fashion.
or maybe the influx of traffic would do the trick by itself? it works for pron*, right?
then we could just pick our favorite service for it’s friggin color palette and be done with it.
* your spam filter is goofy.
**Takes Liz’s bait**
((microformats))
Even after tormenting Tantek at a party in a pub last year after a few cocktails about what did microformats really mean when regular people don’t even use them…Bless T, because he kept a straight face and answered me. I won’t torment you all, as I am not sure it is the answer.
Since my Chronic Social Networking Fatigue (CSNF) set in last May of 2006, my Naturapath Doctor has me on an elimination diet, so I just use email to send out my invites these days. Old Fashioned, so 1996, but it works. Most folks reply back to me via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Pownce, and hCard, but due to my new diet, I didn’t get the replies. Except from the friend who emailed me back…
;op
Hi Tara!
We’ve just launched our service inside Facebook. It’s called Events Plus and incorporates the elements we offer through Eventbrite with the familiarity and infrastructure of Facebook Events.
Check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=091fc382440059e3f30759e7da581e54&pwstdfy=0f07b78ee8bd7fa9ed5000de45f4a772
Cheers,
Julia
Co-Founder of Eventbrite
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