About CalConnect’s New Membership Categories and Fees

Earlier this week, we announced new membership categories and interoperability test event fees. We have been discussing and shaping these changes, the first since CalConnect was established in 2005, for the past 6 months. We want to share with our members and non-members alike what motivated these changes, and what we hope they will accomplish.

CalConnect has two sources of revenue – membership fees, and fees associated with CalConnect events. This revenue underwrites the technical work of CalConnect, as well as our Roundtable Technical Conferences (member meetings) and Interoperability Test events.

Here is how we see the revenue side:

1. CalConnect needs a sufficient revenue stream so that it can expand its reach, its programs, its services to promote interoperable and open calendaring, rather than having to focus our energy and efforts on cutting expenses when our revenues decrease.
2. We need to recognize the value we provide through CalConnect, with membership fees which reflect that value.
3. Our membership classifications and fees need to be coherent and “fair”.
4. CalConnect has not changed its membership fees since they were established in 2005. Using one of the accepted measures of inflation, $10,000 in 2005 is the equivalent of ~$11,800 in 2012.

Although increased revenue is a goal of CalConnect and most other organizations, non-profit as well as for-profit, there is more to this story than revenue.

Because European companies have been members of CalConnect since its inception, in 2007 we decided to bring CalConnect to Europe. As we later noted, “… as standards and interoperability are central to CalConnect’s mission, and are strong core values of European Information Technology, we have long recognized the importance of increasing European involvement in CalConnect”. We traveled in Europe again in 2008 to meet with members and potential members. In 2011, we held our first member meeting in Europe, CalConnect XXII, hosted by Kerio Technologies in Prague, Czech Republic.

Last October, CalConnect XXV was hosted in Z¨rich, Switzerland by Google. Just prior to returning home from Z¨rich, some of us got together over dinner to reflect on the meetings. We were all impressed by some of the non-members, smaller, newer vendors, by and large, who attended as first time observers and/or Interoperability Test Event participants. We all agreed that these “emergent” vendors brought an enthusiasm, and a different perspective which really informed and energized the meetings. Many of these vendors told us they shared our enthusiasm for their participation, but that the current membership fee structure made it difficult to consider CalConnect membership, a story we heard again at the next Roundtable, CalConnect XXVI, hosted by Oracle in Santa Clara, California.

Enfranchising emergent vendors was one of the topics we discussed at the Board’s strategic planning meeting, convened at the University of California, Berkeley, to develop the ideas we had brainstormed in Z¨rich. We continued these discussions within the Board, and early this year brought the issue to the CalConnect Steering Committee, composed of member representatives, which oversees the technical direction of the Consortium. The Steering Committee provided very useful guidance and feedback, especially concerning the fees for our Interoperability events, which was incorporated into the resolutions just approved by the CalConnect Board.

Here is what we hope to accomplish with our new membership and interoperability event fees:

1. Increase diversity, geographic distribution, age, gender, and company size of our membership. This is essential to CalConnect and its mission.
2. Enfranchise emergent vendors, to give them an appropriate voice while they develop their products and markets.
3. Make it easier for emergent vendors to join CalConnect, albeit limited to a single participant. We provide a three year, graduated migration path to full CalConnect membership, with unlimited participation.
4. Make it more attractive for non-member vendors to participate in interoperability test events. Even if these non-members choose not to become members, the test events are energized, and become more robust, through their participation.

All this amounts to increasing our engagement with the wider world of calendaring & scheduling, so we can better meet our goal of improving all aspects of calendaring and scheduling, in particular interoperability. Although we may very well choose to take a more comprehensive look at membership structure in the future, we are very pleased to be able to announce these exciting changes now.

On behalf of the CalConnect Board of Directors,

Gary Schwartz
President

CALCONNECT ANNOUNCES NEW MEMBERSHIP CATEGORIES AND INTEROPERABILITY TEST EVENT FEES

CALCONNECT ANNOUNCES NEW MEMBERSHIP CATEGORIES AND INTEROPERABILITY TEST EVENT FEES

Membership Categories and Fees

In response to suggestions from interested potential members, CalConnect has established two new membership categories. The first is a new small commercial vendor membership for vendors with revenues in the $0-$5M range. This membership is equivalent to existing commercial vendor memberships but applicable for vendors who have not yet reached $5M in annual revenue. The second new category is an Emergent Vendor membership, intended for small, new endeavors. This membership has an initial membership fee for the first year of only $1,000. The fee rises over the next two years; at the end of three years, the Emergent Vendor member becomes a regular Commercial Vendor member in the appropriate fee class based on its revenues at that point. Only one member representative may be appointed by an Emergent Vendor member in the course of a membership year. The Emergent Vendor membership is also offered a reduced Interoperability Test Event fee as discussed below. See Membership Fees for more information and a table of fees.

Interoperability Test Event Fees

Several changes have been made to the Interoperability Test Event fee structure. The regular commercial vendor member fee has been changed from $1795 to $1800 (to make the numbers more rational). Additional participants have been changed from $150 to $200 to ensure CalConnect doesn’t actually lose money for each one (additional participants for the host are also $200).

Non-vendor member participation fees remain unchanged at $350 per person.

Non-member participation fees have been reduced to $1800 for one participant and $600 for each additional participant.

The new Emergent Vendor Member participation fee is $800 for one person.

See Interoperability Test Event Fees for more information and a table of member categories and related fees.

REGISTRATION IS OPEN FOR CALCONNECT XXVII, JUNE 3-7, 2013, HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN IN MADISON, WISCONSIN

REGISTRATION IS OPEN FOR CALCONNECT XXVII, JUNE 3-7, 2013, HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN IN MADISON, WISCONSIN

As usual, Monday and Tuesday all day and Wednesday morning will be the Interoperability Test Event; Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, and Friday will be the CalConnect Roundtable Technical Conference.

General Information:

Logistics information for this event may be found at http://www.calconnect.org/calconnect27.shtml including travel, preliminary hotel, and other planning information. The session schedule is available; the topical agendas will be posted closer to the event. The meeting venue will be the Union South Building, 1308 West Dayton Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. The actual room(s) will be announced shortly before the event. The Conference Hotel is the Doubletree Madison hotel, 525 West Johnson Street, Madison, approximately eight blocks from the Union South building. Our rate is $149/night inclusive of internet, plus tax; the special rate ends on May 13 – after that rooms may be available but the rate is no longer guaranteed.

I encourage you to register early as early registration helps us with event planning and logistics, in addition to restaurant reservations. (Please remember that you need not pay when you register; if desired you may wait until the event and pay by credit card.

About the Roundtable:

The schedule for TC Sessions is set although there may be minor changes if needed. Early registration for the Roundtable will be $350 through 17 May 2013, and $395 thereafter. Another reason to register early: you won’t forget and miss the early registration deadline. Please note that the early registration about applies so long as you register <= 17 May, even if you don't actually pay until the event.

About the Interoperability Test Event:

The information page for the Interoperability Test event is at http://www.calconnect.org/iop1306.shtml. Please see this page for the current list of areas we plan to test; it will be updated regularly as testing registrations and requests are received. In addition, participants may have other areas they wish to test and we will be happy to include them in our planning; the test event registration form provides a place to indicate what you want to test. n all cases at least two participating organizations must be interested in testing a particular area or scenario to form testing pairs.

Please note that Interoperability Test Event Fees have changed slightly — see Interoperability Test Event Fees.

Reports on CalConnect XXVI

Reports on the recent CalConnect XXVI Roundtable and Interoperability Test Event, hosted by Oracle in Santa Clara, California, January 28-February 1, 2013, have been published on the CalConnect website.

CalConnect XXVII will be June 3-7, 2013, hosted by the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin.

CalConnect establishes CALSCALE Ad Hoc Committee to consider non-Gregorian calendar rules

CalConnect has established the CALSCALE Ad Hoc Committee to determine changes and extensions necessary to iCalendar to allow recurrences to accommodate non-Gregorian calendar rules, and will develop a draft specification to be submitted to the IETF for broader discussion within the entire IETF community. The Ad Hoc is intended to complete its work and report out at the CalConnect meeting in June 2013.

CalConnect Establishes TC TASKS Technical Committee

CalConnect has established a new Technical Committee, TC TASKS, following the report-out of the VTODO Ad Hoc Committee. The TC’s Charter is to “Extend the functionality of the iCalendar and specifically VTODO object model to provide enhanced support for tasks including needs such as project management, smart power grids and business task scheduling, in a way that allows a calendaring system to manage the data and calendaring clients to display and change it.”

The new Technical Commitee has a very aggressive schedule and deliverables (see the charter and schedule at TC TASKS Charter).

Member representatives of CalConnect members are welcome to participate in the new Technical Committee. Non-members interested in this activity are encouraged to join CalConnect and participate in the work of TC TASKS.

VPOLL: Consensus Scheduling Component for iCalendar

The VPOLL draft specification defining a new consensus scheduling component for iCalendar has been submitted to the IETF as an Internet Draft: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-york-vpoll/.

This specification “introduces a new iCalendar component (VPOLL) which allows for consensus scheduling, that is voting on a number of alternative meeting or task alternatives”. This draft standard is intended to provide the broad interoperability needed to allow users to participate in consensus scheduling using the calendaring products and service they prefer rather than the product or service used first to enumerate the event and the scheduling choices.

Consensus Scheduling is the subject of a workshop at CalConnect XXVI next week: Consensus Scheduling Workshop at CalConnect XXVI. For more about Consensus Scheduling, see also 7 Things You Should Know About Consensus Scheduling.

CalWS-SOAP SOAP Web Services Protocol for Calendaring V1.0 published

CalWS-SOAP SOAP Web Services Protocol for Calendaring V1.0 has been published as a CalConnect Proposal by the XML Technical Committee. This document defines a SOAP protocol implementation of the abstract Web Services API for Calendaring.

This protocol has been contributed to OASIS WS-CALENDAR as a component of the WS-CALENDAR Specification under development by OASIS.

CalConnect and OASIS have agreed that any future work by CalConnect TC XML or OASIS WS-Calendar (or other committees in CalConnect and OASIS) on their respective versions of CalWS will be harmonized to maintain consistency between the versions. CalConnect and OASIS reserve the right to jointly and formally agree to fork the specifications at some point in the future if need arises.

CalConnect Consensus Scheduling Workshop – January 30, 2013, at CalConnect Roundtable XXVI

CalConnect, the Calendaring & Scheduling Consortium (http://www.calconnect.org), will hold an open Workshop on Consensus Scheduling in conjunction with its member meeting, Roundtable XXVI, on Wednesday afternoon, 30 January, 2013, at Oracle Corporation in Santa Clara.

This workshop will examine the state of the art with respect to consensus scheduling, and explore directions to integrate consensus scheduling into calendaring and scheduling standards and products, to enable interoperability and make consensus scheduling part of the full functionality of calendaring and scheduling products. There will be a presentation and discussion on CalConnect’s work in progress on VPOLL, a proposed new component for iCalendar in support of consensus scheduling.

Participation in the workshop is open to interested individuals and organizations, regardless of whether or not they work for CalConnect members, and whether they are otherwise registered for the CalConnect Roundtable or Interoperability Test Event. No fee will be charged for attending the workshop; however you will need to register in advance unless you have registered for the Roundtable, as space is limited.

Attendees are invited to attend the CalConnect Roundtable as observers, or to consider participating in the CalConnect Interoperability Test Event in the first half of the week.

Tentative Agenda:
1. Introduction – about CalConnect and about Consensus Scheduling
2. Participants lightning talks and discussion – vendors, experience as a user, user requirements or wishlists, etc.
3. Review of existing products
4. Review of CalConnect proposal
    a. Use cases (what is in scope, out of scope)
    b. Technical solution – VPOLL
    c. Interaction with CalDAV
5. Conclusion – what to do from here
    a. How to further promote the VPOLL work
    b. VPOLL testing at the next Interoperability Test Event

Venue:

The meeting will be held at the Oracle campus in Santa Clara, California as part of CalConnect Roundtable XXVI:  4040 Palm Drive, Santa Clara, California 95054. We will be in Building 23, Conference Room 1730.

Schedule:

The workshop will be held from 1:30 to 5:30 Wednesday afternoon, January 30th. Workshop attendees are invited to stay for the reception beginning at 6:00.

Registration and information:

To register for the workshop only, please see http://www.calconnect.org/workshopreg.shtml. To register for the CalConnect Roundtable and/or Interoperability Test Event, please see http://www.calconnect.org/regtypes.shtml.

Logistics information for the workshop and for the CalConnect event: http://www.calconnect.org/calconnect26.shtml.

More About Consensus Scheduling

Consensus scheduling is the process whereby a group comes to agreement on when (and maybe where) to hold a meeting or carry out a task, by identifying the “best” time or location to help maximize participation and minimize inconvenience.  Consensus scheduling minimizes the overhead of achieving consensus or identifying the most favorable time(s) by allowing the potential participants to observe the responses of the other voters, and to adjust their response for the benefit of the entire group. This has significant benefits over “traditional” group scheduling methods which typically involve the exchange of many messages between participants, each trying to come to agreement.  

Although there are a variety of consensus scheduling products and services available, it is not available in most full featured calendaring products, especially enterprise products. Consensus scheduling is not part of calendaring and scheduling standards, and each site and service provides different features and functionality, provides custom integrations with a subset of other calendaring and scheduling services and products, and has differing requirements for user access – authentication and authorization. As some people prefer one consensus service over the others, participants in many formal and/or informational groups may have to register and/or use many different services or sites in the course of their professional and personal activities.

CalConnect has for some time been working on developing a consensus scheduling solution that builds on the internet calendar standards of iCalendar and iTIP (the traditional solution to standards-based calendaring and scheduling).  CalConnect’s approach creates a new iCalendar component, VPOLL, and defines an iTIP process by which “polls” can be sent to participants and votes collected from them.  CalConnect’s work also looks at how this process can be integrated with calendaring system, such as those built on the standard CalDAV calendar server protocol, with the goal of providing more automation for voting and streamlining the decision process for voters.

Please see http://www.calconnect.org/7_things_consensus_scheduling.shtml for a further introduction to consensus scheduling and why it matters to calendaring and scheduling.

Previous CalConnect Workshops:

CalConnect has previously held workshops on vCard, Timezones, Contacts, and Tasks (VTODOs).

Interoperability Testing at CalConnect XXVI, January 28-30, 2013

The Interoperability Test Event will take place all day Monday and Tuesday, January 28-29, and Wednesday morning January 30th during CalConnect XXVI, hosted by Oracle in Santa Clara, California. For information about event logistics please see http://www.calconnect.org/calconnect26.shtml.

At this point we are planning testing in the following areas (Updated 30 November 2012):

• CalDAV testing:
  • access (basic operations of CalDAV)
  • scheduling
  • sync report
  • mobile
  • managed attachments
  • sharing
• iSchedule:
  • Server discovery
  • DKIM security – latest changes for header normalization
• Timezone:
  • Service Protocol (new JSON spec)
  • Timezones by Reference
• VPOLL initial testing
• Autodiscovery protocol
• iCalendar:
  • richtext properties (and hashing)
  • iTIP/iMIP
  • jCal, the JSON Format for iCalendar
  • xCal, the XML Format for iCalendar
• CardDAV testing:
  • generic
  • Sync report
  • mobile
  • vcard 4?
• CalWS-REST and CalWS-SOAP, the web services protocols for iCalendar and WS-Calendar

In addition, participants may have other areas they wish to test and we will be happy to include them in our planning; the test event registration form provides a place to indicate what you want to test. In all cases at least two participating organizations must be interested in testing a particular area or scenario to form testing pairs.

Your organization need not be a member of CalConnect to participate in an Interoperability Test Event.

The information page for the Interoperability Test event is at http://www.calconnect.org/iop1301.shtml. This page also includes any updates to the planned or confirmed testing areas since this blog post.