CalConnect seeks assistance from travel industry technology experts

CalConnect needs your help! We are seeking guidance and assistance from travel industry technology experts to explore the travel itinerary model within calendaring and scheduling.

Traditional travel agencies have given way to travel that is booked directly by the traveler him/herself, using online services providing digital transactions from end to end – searching/selection, booking, payment, ticketing, itineraries, and other ancillary services. Many of these online systems are impressive in their capabilities and their comprehensiveness. However, much of their sophistication is the result of proprietary mechanisms which provide great workflow within their systems, but integrate less successfully with other calendaring & scheduling systems and third party applications.

It is equally true, however, that calendaring and scheduling standards do not really accommodate the needs of today’s (or tomorrow’s) online travel system. Frequently, the data has to be provided as unstructured text because no specific properties exist for the types of information provided. As a result the itinerary information cannot be created and managed by the end users as a native part of their calendar applications.

In the context of our mission to promote interoperable, standards-based calendaring & scheduling, CalConnect is endeavoring to identify the necessary additions and extensions required to the calendaring standards (in particular iCalendar, the “data model”) to fully support travel itineraries as an integrated element in a user’s calendar, and itineraries as elements in automated processes, and to add the additions and extensions to the standards.

However, we need the guidance and assistance of travel industry technology experts to identify what elements are required, and to fully explore the travel itinerary model within calendaring and scheduling. Our initial goal is to develop a set of use cases and requirements for digital itinerary systems to enhance the usefulness of calendar data. We anticipate this work taking place over a six month period via periodic conference calls and online communication. Following on from this CalConnect will develop the enhancements to the calendaring standards themselves to satisfy the identified industry requirements and use cases.

Therefore, we are forming a working group, a collaboration between the calendaring & scheduling experts from the CalConnect member organizations, and travel industry experts, and are seeking help in finding these experts. To learn how you can participate, or identify someone who might participate, please contact Dave Thewlis, CalConnect’s Executive Director, at:

Dave.Thewlis@calconnect.org
+1 707 840 9391

For additional background on travel itineraries and calendaring and scheduling see “7 Things about Digital Travel Itineraries” at http://www.calconnect.org/7_things_itineraries.shtml.

To learn more about becoming a member of CalConnect, see http://calconnect.org/whyjoin.shtml.

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CalConnect’s focus is interoperable calendaring and scheduling. Through promoting, advising, educating, and the work of our technical committees, we advance the state of interoperable calendaring and of interoperable scheduling. CalConnect is a 501(c)6 tax-exempt mutual benefit association incorporated in 2004. We are a member-driven organization – our agenda and our work products all result from the leadership by participants from our member organizations. The consortium is a partnership between vendors of calendaring & scheduling systems and tools, and users of those tools in North America, Europe, and Asia. Our membership includes some of the world’s largest software development organizations, as well as emergent vendors and startups, end user organizations, interested individuals, and research universities. CalConnect’s members believe that through the collegial interactions and collaborations among erstwhile competitors in the marketplace, calendaring & scheduling vendors and consumers all benefit.

REGISTRATION IS OPEN FOR CALCONNECT XXIX IN SAN FRANCISCO, FEBRUARY 3-7, 2014

REGISTRATION IS OPEN FOR CALCONNECT XXIX, FEBRUARY 3-7, 2014, HOSTED BY MOZILLA IN SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

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

General Information:

Logistics information for this event may be found at http://www.calconnect.org/calconnect29.shtml including venue, travel, hotel, and other planning information. The session schedule is available; the agenda slots will be assigned and topical agendas will be posted closer to the event. The meeting venue will be at Mozilla’s San Francisco facility, 2 Harrison Street, San Francisco.

The Conference Hotel is the Shattuck Plaza Hotel in Berkeley; due to extremely expensive hotel prices in San Francisco, we will be using BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit system) to commute to and from San Francisco each morning and evening (the hotel is 1/2 block from a BART station; Mozilla is about a kilometer from a BART station). Please note that you need to book your via the link on the CalConnect logistics page for this event to receive the CalConnect rate. Also note that the room block ends as of 3 January 2014 – so if you are planning to come I encourage you to get your room reserved soon!

I also 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 Conference:

The overall schedule for sessions has been set although the actual assignment of slots will be made next month. Early registration for the conference will be $350 through 17 January 2014, 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 January, even if you don't actually pay until the event.

In addition to our regular Technical Committee sessions, we will expect to receive the reports of several Ad Hoc Committees (short-term working groups) established to explore specific new areas of possible work, including Calendaring APIs, Federated Shared Calendars, and a generic PUSH facility for CalDAV. New Technical Committees for some or all of the new areas may be instantiated before or at this meeting.

About the Interoperability Test Event:

The information page for the Interoperability Test event is at http://www.calconnect.org/iop1402.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.

We invite you to join us in San Francisco at Mozilla for CalConnect XXIX.