rethinking the community calendar: a case study in fourth r principles

rethinking the
community calendar
a case study in fourth r principles
Jon Udell
Berkman Center
December 7, 2010
http://jonudell.net

where’s the data?

here’s data!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xml:base="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<channel>
<title>Berkman Luncheon Series Events</title>
<link> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/views/events-upcoming/947</link>
<description> Events</description>
<item>
<title> [Dec 7] Rethinking the community calendar: A case study in learning and teaching Fourth R principles</title>
<link> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2010/12/udell</link>
<description>
Tuesday, December 7, 12:30 pm Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor RSVP required for those attending in person (<ahref="mailto:rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu">rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu</a>) This event will be <ahref="../../../../../interactive/webcast">webcast</a>
<channel>
<item>
<description>
Tuesday, December 7, 12:30 pm Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor RSVP required for those attending in person (<ahref="mailto:rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu">rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu</a>) This event will be <ahref="../../../../../interactive/webcast">webcast</a>
<channel>
<item>
<description>
Tuesday, December 7, 12:30 pm BerkmanCenter, 23 Everett Street, second floor RSVP required for those attending in person (<ahref="mailto:rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu">rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu</a>) This event will be <ahref="../../../../../interactive/webcast">webcast</a>

technologists: thou shalt publish rss feeds
website publishers: we hear and obey
users: why can’t we make sense of calendars?

the blog syndication network
publish
aggregate
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rss
rss
atom
atom

the blog syndication network
What is the Ob of Nebraska?
The Platte.
publish
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What is Ann Arbor of Texas?
Austin.
rss
rss
What is the RSS of calendars?
iCalendar.
atom
atom
the calendar syndication network
publish
subscribe
aggregate
ics
api
syndication hubs
ics
ics
ics
ics

annarbor,mi
honolulu,hi
san diego,ca
atlanta,ga
placerville,ca
fredericksburg,va
berkeley,ca
bellingham,wa
troy,ny
keenenh
barcelona,spain
evansville,in
falls church,va
ferndale,mi
myrtle beach,sc
greenville,sc
brattleboro,vt
menlo park, ca
Santa Rosa,CA
ithaca,ny
sunbury-on-thames,uk
liverpool,uk
baltimore md
providence ri
sonora,ca
new boston,nh
ottawa,on
Perkasie,Pa
polkcity,ia
prescott,az
cambridge,ma
guelph,on
saskatoon,sk
snoqualmie,wa
alameda,ca
westbountiful,ut
toronto,on
virginiabeach,va
westborough,ma
west lafayette,in
huntington, wv
what these are
what these are not
syndicated networks of events
free services running in the azure cloud
open data feeds based on open source code
invitations to help build the data web
centrally-managed databases of events
destination sites

a menlo park hub
hub stats: events by source

events at stanford

a stanford feed in the menlopark hub
Eventful
Stanford’s iCalendar feed
Upcoming
Redwood City’s icalendar feed

a stanford feed in a menlo park site
Eventful
Stanford’s iCalendar feed
Upcoming
Redwood City’s icalendar feed

elmcity principles
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20101006T113000Z
SUMMARY:-Rain date for AP Env. Sci. trip to Monadnock
data structure
transformation
hub
syndication

what people see
what computers see
what computers need to see
or
or
or
to read, print,
and interact with
information
to enable people to read, print, and interact with
information
to enable data to flow and recombine
why?

principle of data structure
How we describe calendar events:
“Jon Udell: Rethinking the community calendar, Berkman Center, Tues Dec 7 12:30“
How computers understand calendar events:
DTSTART;TZID=Eastern Standard Time;20101207T123000
SUMMARY:JonUdell: Rethinking the community calendar
LOCATION:BerkmanCenter

principle of data transformation
Laws of arithmetic
Laws of data
<dtstart> <parameters> <tzid>EST</tzid> </parameters>
<date-time>
20060102T120000</date-time> </dtstart>
Date: Dec 7, 2010
Time: 12:30PM
Zone: Eastern
=
DTSTART;TZID=EST;
20101207T123000
=
=

two-way vs one-way transformations
Laws of arithmetic
Laws of data
<dtstart> <parameters> <tzid>EST</tzid> </parameters>
<date-time>
20060102T120000</date-time> </dtstart>
Date: Dec 7, 2010
Time: 12:30PM
Zone: Eastern
DTSTART;TZID=EST;
20101207T123000

principle of pub/sub syndication
syndication
hubs

sounds like computer science!
data structure
data transformation
pub/sub syndication
one-way hashing
i’m not a geek,
why do i care?

2006: jeannette wing

jeannettewing’s manifesto
“To reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability.
It is a universally applicable attitude and skill.”
R1 Reading
R2 Writing
R3 Arithmetic
R4 ???
computational thinking
21st-century skills
digital literacy
network mastery
systems thinking

Phil Libin: “The basics of asymmetric cryptography are fundamental concepts that any member of society who wants to understand how the world works, or could work, needs to understand.”

“We posted weekly.pdf to the website. Isn’t that good enough?”

monday night chess club
Keene Sentinel: Monday night chess club,
6:30 PM, Best Western Hotel
Eventful.com: Monday night chess club,
6:30 PM, E.F. Lane Hotel
The chess club doesn’t know how (or why) to produce an authoritative data feed about itself
The newspaper doesn’t know how (or why) to consume such a feed

missing concepts
structured data can be represented in many ways
some representations of data are best for people, others for computers
machine-friendly data can syndicate without loss of fidelity
data feeds (and items) have globally unique names (urls)
urls enable the “small pieces loosely joined” effect
urls pass data “by reference” rather than “by value”
when data syndicates from an url, the owner/publisher controls it

why is this hard?

not just calendars

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rethinking the community calendar: a case study in fourth r principles

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