SF Community Calendar Events HowTo

The basic rule

Thank you for contributing! 🌻

You are trusted. So you have permission to create, modify or delete any calendar entries – just do it. And even if you should mess up some things, everybody else trusts that you’ll be giving your best to fix things.

To keep the calendar entries sweet, to the point and brief, please consider the following suggestions and help.

Which kind of events to add?

Please enter not-for-profit conferences, unconferences, retreats, meetups, public general meetings / chapter meetings, or similar.

Please do NOT enter for-profit workshops, courses, company promotion events (not even free ones), coaching offers, or similar.

How to write event titles

Example

🇳🇱 World Conference SOLUTION III

HowTo

Indicate the location of the event (NOT its language) by prefixing the appropriate country flag “emoji”, followed by a blank and the event title, written in the language that the event will be held in. This way, you allow viewers of the calendar to quickly scan it for events that take place close to their homes.

It is easy to add a flag:

  • It is safe to use the flag emojis on the keyboard of your smartphone. If you’re working at a netbook or PC, you can look up, copy and paste flag emojis from emojipedia.org/flags They are standardized and work on all platforms, from smartphones to desktop computers.
  • If the event is an online or “virtual” event, e.g. a video conference, it is suggested you use the emoji “Globe with meridians”: 🌐 By using this emoji, no single continent is preferred, and we ensure everybody will understand they can participate from their homes.

How to write an event description

Example

Meet many, many solution-focused colleagues from all over the world!
The conference venue is really beautiful: the prestigious Kurhaus Hotel, at the beach of the North Sea! Learn about tools, techniques and solution talk, that you can apply directly! Share your best practices and solution-focused innovations and learn from others! Come and join us to celebrate the solution-focused way of life!

Please find more details here.

HowTo

Be brief, and for further details, simply add link to the website of the event, à la “Please find more details here”. Most of the time, the respective websites already have a great call for participants that you can simply copy a few lines from.

How to make sure event dates and times are correct

If you don’t know the start & end times, just leave the event as an all-day event. You can trust that the website of the event will provide further details, and you can always come back at a later time, to add that information once you have it.

If the event has fixed starting and end times, please set them once you get to know them.

⚠️ Make sure the time zone (available beside the time fields) is set to the time zone of the event!

Concise event locations really matter

You might just type in a few words into the “Where?” calendar field, and save everything without a further glance. If you type in the event location down to the street address level, you’ll be loved:

🗺️ People will have the opportunity of having a map displayed, and see precisely where the event will take place.

🚗 People who use a car navigation system fed by their calendar will thank you for making it easier for them.

The “Where?” field is actually a search box: it searches Google Maps in the background for the text that you are just typing. So please: look at what locations Google comes up with, and pick the one that is the the actual venue.

If the event does not have a location (e.g., a video call), leave the “where” field empty. No matter how crazy the words seem that you’d like to enter (“internet”, “at home”, “anywhere you like”, …) – Google will find a place on the globe that actually has an address containing these words, and it’s for sure not the one that you wanted…

Disaster recovery

Relax. Shit happens.

In general: if you mess up something, you’ll give your best to fix things. You are trusted to do that.

The Google calendars have a trash bin, so if you accidentally delete calendar entries, you can simply restore them from there.

Finally…

And if you have read until here: go now and create your first SF Community Calendar event!

Thank you for joining in! 🌻