Symposia at CalConnect XXV in Zurich

Please note that the Thursday and Friday 1030-1200 sessions have been exchanged; Calendaring Futures is now on Thursday and Best Practices on Friday.

In addition to our regular Roundtable Technical Conference sessions, CalConnect is offering special Symposia/Workshops Thursday and Friday mornings October 4th and 5th. These sessions are covered by the Roundtable Conference registration fee and are open to all registered participants.

The Symposia Chairs, presenters and discussion leaders will be principal authors of key calendaring and scheduling specifications such as CalDAV, xCal, and CalWS, and are major contributors to leading calendaring and scheduling applications.

Improving the web calendaring experience for end users (Thursday 0830-1000)

This session will examine problems related to publishing calendars on the web, and discuss possible solutions. Key issues include: improving the user experience so that subscribing to web calendars can be more seamless than today; more timely updating of calendar data; integration with other types of data; improved discovery of available calendars. We will examine previous work in this area by CalConnect, as well as discuss experiences of session participants. We will also examine areas of calendaring not covered by existing CalConnect participants (such as travel sites, social networking, party planning etc). Our goal is to determine if there is useful work for CalConnect to do in this area, including whether there are other organizations we should be talking to and trying to involve in this process.

Calendaring Futures and CalConnect directions (Thursday 1030-1200)

CalConnect is now in its 8th year of operation. Over that period, there have been many changes in the calendaring and scheduling world:

1. Calendaring’s center has shifted from the “fat” desktop client to the web and mobile.
2. Many new vendors have entered the market place, and others have been transformed through corporate consolidations.
3. Great progress has been made in calendaring standards, while at the same proprietary API’s have risen in number and importance.
4. Internationalization/localization are more important than ever but the standards have not significantly addressed the relevant issues.
5. Social networking, hardly on the radar at all in 2004, is now a dominant integration point with calendaring.
6. Geolocation is a foundation of many apps and applications but not sufficiently addressed by calendaring standards.
7. What we call “rich text” but will soon simply refer to as “content” is everywhere except in the calendaring standards.

CalConnect’s mission is to “promote general understanding of and provide mechanisms to allow interoperable calendaring and scheduling methodologies, tools and applications to enter the mainstream of computing.” To best fulfill this mission, CalConnect needs to take stock of what has taken place in calendaring over the last ten years, and to try to divine what that augurs for the future.

We will discuss where calendaring has been and where is calendaring going, What needs to change in the standards to support and promote the interoperable calendaring environment of 2012 and beyond, the tension between proprietary API’s and calendaring standards, and finally what does CalConnect need to do to continue to provide value to the calendaring developers, and perhaps most importantly, the end users of calendaring.

Internationalization/Localization for calendaring data (Friday 0830-1000)

Calendar data has to exist across language and locale boundaries. Many places require calendar data published in multi-languages to satisfy the needs of their consumers. There are three parts to this: the process of creating multi-lingual calendar data (handler by a content ‘producer’); the process by which ‘producers’ send their data to content ‘publishers’ who may aggregate data from many sources; and the process by which content ‘consumers’ can select the appropriate data to retrieve. Each of these three processes has different requirements for how multi-lingual calendar data is manipulated. Our goal is to determine these requirements and see where current standards are lacking and propose solutions.

Best practices for publishing iCalendar data to ensure optimum interoperability (Friday 1030-1200)

This session will examine the event publication process with a specific view of how to create calendar data to ensure optimally interoperability with the plethora of calendar user agents that exist today. In particular, we will pay attention to issues such as timezone information, recurring events, referencing external data (such as tickets, ancillary locations – e.g. parking, etc). Our goal is to put together a CalConnect white paper outlining best practices for publishing calendar data either directly to end users or on the web.

Calling All Calendaring Clients – particularly those in Europe

We would like to send a special invitation to folks with calendaring and scheduling clients to attend CalConnect XXV in Zurich on October 1-5, 2012, and participate in the Interoperability Testing. There will be a number of CalDAV servers begin tested at the event, and this is a unique opportunity for European organizations (or inidividuals) to test with iCal server, Bedework, Kerio, Google, SabreDAV, and so forth. We’ve listed the primary focus of the testing on the Interoperability Test Event web page, but if you are interested in testing something else, or simply testing with as many servers as possible, that can certainly be arranged.

We are offering a special combined fee of $350 per person for this event which will cover both the Interoperability Test Event and the Technical Conference (or either one), for first-time attendees at CalConnect. You can find out more about this event at the CalConnect XXV Logistics page.

CalConnect XXV is only three weeks away, so it’s time to start planning now. If you have any questions, please contact us at Contact CalConnect.

CalConnect Leadership Changes to Board of Directors and Steering Committee

CalConnect announces new members on its Board of Directors, and on its Steering Committee (charged with the technical direction of the consortium).

On the Board of Directors, Ciny Joy (Oracle) and Scott Mace (HealthLeaders Media) join Gary Schwartz (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Pam Taylor (Sterling Commerce) and Dave Thewlis (DCTA Inc.). Mr. Mace is also known as the author of The Calendar Swamp blog.

On the Steering Committee, Andrew McMillan (individual member), Carnegie Mellon University, Intand, and Kerio Technologies join Apple, Oracle, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of California.

CalConnect thanks the members and individuals who are donating their time and effort to leading and improving CalConnect and enabling it to fulfill its mission of calendaring and scheduling interoperability. We also thank those members and individuals who are stepping down from the Board (Kellie Hunter, People Cube, and Pat Egen, Patricia Egen Consulting) and the Steering Committee (NASA, Patricia Egen Consulting, PeopleCube, and the University of Wisconsin) for the time and effort they have devoted to CalConnect.

Patricia Egen of Patricia Egen Consulting Second Recipient of CalConnect Distinguished Service Award

CalConnect is honored to announce that Patricia Egen, of Patricia Egen Consulting and the founder of CalConnect, is the second recipient of the CalConnect Service Award. The award was presented at CalConnect XXIV on May 24th, 2012.

Pat has been involved with calendaring and scheduling for many years, and was responsible for a mainframe calendaring system, yes — such things really existed, some years ago. She became a champion for users and interoperability long ago, leading to her involvement in calendaring and scheduling standards in the IETF, which took over the original calendaring specification and established the CALSCH Working Group to move forward with calendaring standards. Pat became co-chair of CALSCH in 1999, and she organized the initial interoperability testing efforts.

When work on calendaring standards, CAP, iCalendar, iTIP and iMIP, stalled in the IETF in the early 2000s, Pat realized the need for a separate organization or entity to somehow “jump start” the calendaring effort, and set out to find other like-minded individuals to work on, and establish, what would later become CalConnect, starting with the first CalConnect Roundtable in Montreal in 2004, hosted by Oracle. Pat became the Interoperability Test Manager for CalConnect for the inaugural CalConnect event in January of 2005, and managed every interoperability test event until late 2011, when the press of business and schedule necessitated passing that responsibility on.

During the nearly seven years that Pat served in this position, in addition to running the interoperability test event, she compiled and published the post-event reports. Pat has served as a Director of CalConnect since its inception, most recently as Chair of the Board of Directors. Pat has also served on the Steering Committee since its inception. Pat was the chair of TC IOPTEST since its inception, and has participated when her schedule permitted in the work of other technical committees.

As Pat’s own business grows and prospers, she has less time to be actively involved with CalConnect, but she has always had, and retains, a strong interest in the purpose, the work, and goals of CalConnect, and remains a passionate supporter of CalConnect and of interoperable calendaring and scheduling. With this award, we recognize Pat for the seminal role she played in the creation of CalConnect, and for service in many different roles over the last eight years. However, the Patricia Egen story has another aspect, that of a tireless advocate of the customer’s and user’s needs in calendaring and scheduling, who unceasingly supported that perspective in discussions with vendors and customer members of CalConnect, reminding all of us of the many ways we can contribute with the unique skills and perspectives each of us has. Perhaps this thought, attributed to Margaret Mead, sums it up best, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Thank you Pat, for your commitment to changing the calendaring world.

Interoperability Testing at CalConnect XXIV May 21-23 2012

At the upcoming CalConnect XXIV event we will as usual be offering an Interoperability Test Event all day Monday and Tuesday May 21-22, and Wednesday morning the 23rd. At this event we will be testing the following:

• CalDAV Access
• CalDAV Scheduling, including Implicit Scheduling
• iMIP and iMIP Gateways
• CardDAV
• Timezone Service Protocol and Timezones by Reference

This list will be updated as additional testing areas are identified and requested by two or more testing organizations.

We may be testing the following if two or more testing organizations express interest:

• iSchedule
• Web Services (CalWS REST and CalWS SOAP)

In all cases at least two participating organizations must be interested in testing a particular area or scenario to form testing pairs.

Additionally, we are planning on special BOF sessions on Shared Address Books and CalDAV Test Suites during the Interoperability Test Event:

The information page for the Interoperability Test event is at
http://www.calconnect.org/iop1205.shtml
. A short description of the BOFs at the test event will be added to this page in early April.

Please note that the Interoperability Test Event registration fee for non-vendor members is now $350 per person. Test Event registration fees for vendor members and for non-members remain unchanged at $1795 and $2795 respectively for the first two participants, and $150 per additional participant.

CalWS-SOAP SOAP Web Services Protocol for Calendaring available for Public Review

The SOAP version of the Web Services Protocol for Calendaring is now available for public review and comment for a period of at least one month; the public comment period will last until at least 22 March 2012.  To review the document and comment, please see Public Review Documents on the CalConnect website.  (Note:  This public review is being carried out in parallel with the public review of the OASIS WS-Calendar version of the protocol.)

Bernard Desruisseaux of Oracle first recipient of CalConnect Distinguished Service Award

CalConnect is honored to announce that Bernard Desruisseaux of Oracle was the first recipient of the CalConnect Distinguished Service Award.

The CalConnect Distinguished Service Award was created by the Board of Directors early in 2011 to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary and/or exemplary service to CalConnect and to interoperable calendaring more generally.  At CalConnect XXIII last week, CalConnect announced that Bernard Desruisseaux of Oracle was the first recipient of the award.

Bernard has been active in CalConnect since its founding in 2004: he was one of the original Oracle team at the very first IOP test event, and helped to host the original CalConnect Roundtable in Montreal in 2004.  He has chaired TC CalDAV and TC iSCHEDULE since their inception.  In addition, he served on ad hoc committees and was most recently Oracle’s representative to the Steering Committee.  Bernard has authored, edited, and contributed to numerous IETF and CalConnect specifications.  He has recommended possible new members to us and us to them.  Bernard has attended almost every Roundtable, and most of the interoperability test events, up to this year, when his job responsibilities have drawn him away from direct involvement in CalConnect.

Bernard’s integrity, collegiality and comradeship, and his great technical knowledge, contributed to his ability to support the work of CalConnect, and to balance the interests and obligations of his employer with that of the greater good of the IT community and interoperable calendaring.

On behalf of CalConnect and the CalConnect Board of Directors.

Dave Thewlis, Executive Director

Interoperability Testing at CalConnect XXIII

Our next Interoperability Testing Event will be at CalConnect XXIII, January 30-31 and Wednesday morning February 1. CalConnect XXIII will be hosted by Apple in Cupertino, California.

Testing scenarios at this event will continue to evolve but at this point we are looking at the following possibilities:

• CardDAV testing
• iCalendar/iMIP/iTIP testing
• CalDAV testing, especially CalDAV Scheduling
• CalDAV/CardDAV SRV Discovery and Well-Known URI
• WebDAV Sync Report for CalDAV and CardDAV
• Timezone Service Protocol and Timezones by Reference
• xCal, the XML Format for iCalendar
• Task Scheduling
• (from client side typically don’t have organizers and attendees)
• Extended query
• Recurring tasks for alarms and regeneration
• Timerange query with no DTSTART and DUE
• CalWS-REST and CalWS-SOAP, the web services protocols for calendar
• iSchedule (new draft planned by testing event)
• Mobile CalDAV client/server testing
• If there is interest, synchronization testing for mobile clients in general

What we actually do test will depend on who registers, and what (and with whom) they wish to test, so early registration for the test event would be appreciated.

Additionally, we are offering two special BOF sessions during the the Interoperability Test Event over lunch on Monday and Tuesday the 30th and 31st.

These BOFs will be focused on implementation issues of interest to calendar developers. Monday will be on Updating versus Replacement of Calendar Data; Tuesday will be on Auto-discovery and Account Provisioning.

The information page for the Interoperability Test event is at
http://www.calconnect.org/iop1201.shtml
. For a short descripttion of the BOFs at the test event please see
http://www.calconnect.org/iop1201.shtml#bofs
.

For general information and logistics about CalConnect XXIII, please see
http://www.calconnect.org/calconnect23.shtml
.

CalConnect will return to Europe in Autumn 2012

Based on the success of our first European CalConnect event (October in Prague), we have decided that our Autumn 2012 event will also be in Europe, and are actively seeking hosting proposals. The dates are probably October 1-5 (at the host’s convenience it might move a week or two earlier or later), and will be decided, along with the location, once the host is identified. We hope to find a host and identify the location and exact dates as soon as possible, and will report progress on this blog. Hope to see you in Europe next Autumn!

Vetting iCalendar files

In my blog post of December 27, 2010, In calendaring, success means the right thing, the right way!, I talked about downloading iCalendar .ics files from university sports web sites, and importing these events into different calendaring systems to ascertain whether the event data was interpreted the same way in each system. I discovered that more often than not, the events were not represented as intended as they did not conform to, or fully exploit the capabilities of, the iCalendar specification. I concluded that post with “It is well worth your while to run through the exercise of exporting your public events, and importing them into the more widely used calendaring systems to ensure that you have, indeed, done the right thing the right way.”

Among the tools I used for this exercise was the iCalendar Validator developed by Doug Day and Jon Udell. On our CalConnect website, we provide a link to a web instance that you can validate iCalendar files against (See
http://calconnect.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/doug-days-icalendar-validator/
). As noted, on the web site,
http://icalvalid.cloudapp.net/
, “technically speaking, the word “validation” is somewhat incorrect, as there are no definitive rules we can follow to guarantee a calendar is valid (or invalid). Perhaps a better description would be “proofing” tools; however, for practical reasons I call it “validation”. Or put another way, among other things, there is no way to insure the syntax of the iCalendar file implements the intended semantics.

Shortly thereafter, I contacted Doug Day to share with him some “helpful” suggestions I had for making iCalendar Validator even better, such as displaying how many events are without any timezone reference. We also discussed the possibility of Doug open sourcing the code, as the iCalendar Validator is just one of many projects competing for his time.

Last month, Doug did just that, or in his own words,

“icalvalid, the iCalendar Validator found at
http://icalvalid.cloudapp.net
, is now open-source! It’s hosted on github at
https://github.com/dougrday/icalvalid
. This validation utility was created to validate calendaring data against the iCalendar standard (RFC 5545). We’re looking for contributors – please consider contributing your time/efforts to help improve the validator!”

I commend Doug for sharing his work in this open fashion. And, for those of you who become contributors, I would still love to see a display of how many events are represented without a timezone reference.

Gary Schwartz
President, The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium