Peter Caputa IV just posted this…..

Marc Canter & OpenEvents

I am warming up to Marc Canter’s OpenEvents idea.

And I am warming up to him, as well. I pride myself on being a persistent bastard. But, he takes the cake on that one.

So, with OpenEvents, Marc has outlined who he thinks needs to be involved and what the steps he thinks should be. He is also looking for people to step up and support it, and we’ve both been working behind the scenes to see who is into it and rally people to the cause. (him more than me)

The motivating factor for Marc seems to be that it is that OpenMedia is the “Shining Path” Forward. And I agree that it is the most virtuous and ideal path that we (as people genuinely interested in the welfare of other people) could create together. The liberal and the equal opportunity champion in me, loves his vision of OpenMedia: a world where big media companies (or even small ones) don’t control what we see… and where we control the flow of information. But, it is the capitalist in me that treats this effort with excitement and apprehension at the same time.

There are a few things that excite me about the whole idea:

I am all for mutually beneficial collaboration. In fact, I seek that on a daily basis with my customers, partners, and other tech companies. @ WhizSpark, we’ve relaunched our site recently, and we’ve caught the attention of quite a few people in the event’s business. I don’t like to call anyone a competitor until they decide they don’t want anything to do with me. (Even if they consider me a competitor, I would rather come up with something new than start having a tit for tat “I can do that” too competition.) Nevertheless, I think there are ways to collaborate with people and other companies that do the same thing, where both can benefit. And I think OpenEvents is a great way to make that happen.

Also, we’ve developed an innovative way of promoting events @ WhizSpark, we are up to several thousand members, getting about 20 signups a day, and people are entering events into the system. However, there are obviously event companies and sites with a bigger pile of events (eg evite, upcoming.org, socialweb.net). So, sharing event data back and forth, is in our best interests. On the other hand, though, it is not in everyone’s best interest. In fact, I’d say that it is threatening to the business models of evite (advertising-based: if everyone has access to the event data, then they won’t get the all of the eyeballs) and socialweb.net (charging people to syndicate event listings to their website).

And as Marc has said, the state of syndication of events (eg WhizSpark, RSSCalendar) is improving, but still has a ways to go. What we are all doing is not flexible nor powerful enough for people’s demands of sharing calendars and event data. Alone, I am confident that we will get better. But, I imagine that OpenEvents can help us get there quicker, possibly. Maybe not.

There are a few things that scare me about the whole idea:

Events is a big business… and going to events (small and big) is at the core of all of our lives….so it effects everyone and everyone wants to effect it. So, it’d be naive of me to think that with a pool of event information out there, there won’t be 10 new WhizSpark’s that pop-up from someone’s garage (that’s where we came from: OpenEvents makes that easier). So, the barrier to entry in this business becomes lower with OpenEvents. On the other hand, this barrier to entry might be a great thing for WhizSpark. Del.icio.us and flickr are having awesome success by being at the core of bookmarks and image sharing on the web (respectively) and they have legions of people building cool tools off of their repository of data.

I also have never been involved in an “open” movement. My background is corporate America, where too many people sit around at a table and try to agree on shit… and then don’t do anything. I just envision trying to coordinate an “openevents” movement with a bunch of people with different vested interests, trying to keep their strategies close to them, but get as much as they can out of it. Anyways, that part of it doesn’t excite me.

Overall, the idea of OpenEvents excites me more than it concerns me.

So, what I will throw my 160 pounds behind is:
From the people/biz side:
- Recruiting a few (emphasis on only a few) companies/individuals willing to help develop the schema
- Share event data between WhizSpark and another event based or community based site.

From the tech side:
- Setting a standard schema for structuring event data, with a few companies interested/already involved in the “event” biz. (Making sure it is compliant with RSS standards.)
- Publish the schema.

Obviously, there are a ton of things that can be done after this event information is distributed across the web. However, I think that it is best to let the free market, entrepreneurs, random techies and other participants in the OpenMedia revolution - to make that happen.

It should be obvious that my interests and my loyalty is with the success of my company. I have money, time and other people’s money and time invested in this, and my primary goal is to make it a financial success. As president, a director and shareholder, that is my primary interest and legal and ethical responsibility.

As long as OpenEvents is complementary to this goal, I am all for it.

[pc4media]

Here’s Marc’s notes:

- call Ross Mayfield - get a Wiki setup - keep it private at first

- use Wiki to constitue org with core members - ascertain scope, goals and rules of group

- then worry about a site, deployment, specs and opening up the effort to the public

IMHO

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2004 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.