[OSGeo-Discuss] Conference web timetable

[Barry Rowlingson]

HI all,

 I'm working on the web-based timetable for FOSS4G and I thought I'd
get some input. I've had a look at the E**I UC conference web as well
as timetables for other conferences for inspiration. I've also been
watching lots of television.

 Currently there's just something like a spreadsheet-dump of our
provisional schedule - note there have been a small number of changes
to this:

  http://2013.foss4g.org/timetable/

But clearly this is a bit rubbish for the real thing.

I'm wondering about features and layout. Here's a brain dump of things:

Features: what functionality do you think is needed?

 * off-line mode - our Wifi will be perfect, so maybe we don't need
this. I'm not even sure how it would work, not having played with
local browser storage before. I guess the easiest way is to download
the conference data as a JSON file...

 * search title/presenter/tag - easy, just need to write some django
search index classes, hook haystack into it, write some forms and
templates

 * select 'favourite' events - there's no logins, so it would be
stored in a long-lived cookie, so per-device-user-browserprofile

 * download sessions/talks/events/favourites in calendar format -
there's python/django code for this so doable.

 * "Now/Next" view - shows what's on now and what's on next, like an
onscreen TV guide. I also promise that people's presentations wont
have a little popup on screen at 5 mins before they finish with "Next
on FOSS4G, another episode of ..."

 * +1/"like this" button - a little bit of social sauce, this might
give us an advance warning of popular talks for possible room
rescheduling.

 * REST API and people can write their own front-ends - hmmmmm.....


Layout: how should this all look on the page?

 * mobile friendly - obviously essential

 * "EPG" style (like an onscreen TV-guide, with time going across the
top and rooms as tv channels) This might be more mobile-friendly with
people generally holding their phones upright. Scroll left-right or
hit the 'now' button to jump around in time. Can probably get most of
the concurrent streams in.

 * "Scroll down style"  with rooms across the top and time running
down the screen. Scroll up/down to navigate in time, but you need a
wide screen to get all concurrent streams in.

 * show title/presenter/tags

 * click to show description

 So, ideas to make the FOSS4G web timetable the best FOSS4G web
timetable ever please!

 Lastly a call for help - I'm not the best web designer in the world -
I'm not even the best web designer in The Beatles[1] - so if anyone
would want the job of taking my rubbish CSS and tidying it up to work
in IE, or telling me my classes are all wrong, or my <br/> is not
semantic, then that would be welcome. Please email directly. This is
all being done in Django under an open-source license, but its really
front-end devs we need.

Barry

[1]
Interviewer: "Is Ringo the best drummer in the world?"
John Lennon: "Ringo isn't even the best drummer in The Beatles"