"So many conferences, how can one keep up? Is there a master calendar for all conference events in the SoCal area?"She's right to ask, but this is a daunting task. She points out the LA Convention Center site, which is a good start, but there is so many more venues even beyond the hotel conference centers and ballrooms where events meetings, and conferences are being held. So, as a City Nerd, I know it must be done: some needs to set up a true LA City (at least to start) Master Calendar.
Sure, we have ExperienceLA which claims to be LA's Official Cultural Calendar. (But, really, what does official mean?) And, that only has a portion of what's going on, too.
Even this weekend, there was so much going on, but you could only find out about it all by going to many different sites. And even, then, I missed that the DooDah Parade was today.
So, I want to point out an under-utilized resource...
The City of Los Angeles Citywide Calendar.
Now, if in the budget, the Mayor would place and the Council approve a "Calendar Master" to scout the City and post the events, meetings, etc., this calendar could be the one-stop source of event information for the City. What's sad is that the city departments don't use it already. For instance, Cultural Affairs could use it to promote their events and the events they co-sponsor. The framework is there for a great resource for the people... if someone is willing to do the work!
The City should have a searchable master calendar for the City at one location for anything the City sponsors, funds, is affiliated with, hosts, or has any connection or relevance to the City and/or Angelenos.
4 comments:
Great post! I've bookmarked it. Will definitely use as a reference. In the meantime check out my blog!
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LACityNerd:
Thanks for bringing this simple though important issue to the forefront. Our agency has made regular use of the City of Los Angeles 'master calendar' which is always synchronous with our own LAFD version at:
www.lafd.org/calendar.htm
...it's sad to see that more City agencies have not embraced this simple tool.
Respectfully Yours in Municipal Nerdity,
Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department
Hmm...well, experienceLA is considered the official cultural calendar because it's directly funded and supported by the arts commission. Basically, the idea of one collaborative site where all can post their events is the very thing experienceLA is establishing. The site only representing a portion of all that's happening is due to the fact that experienceLA relies on organizations/venues/people to contribute to the free public calendar. It's a two way street: an official calendar/resource needs to be promoted on a larger scale and contributors need to make it their responsibility to post to said resource.
Anyway, experienceLA is still relatively new... so don't give up on it just yet! ^___^ And beyond all of this, it all comes down to the simple fact that LA DOES have culture and the negative stereotypes that say otherwise need to be debunked in one way or another.
I'm with anonymous, we need not to give up on ExperienceLA. We need to get all organizations to use it and promote it.
And look at this:
http://www.experiencela.com/kmozart/kmozartcal.asp
Now organizations are using ExperienceLA as their calendar. Genius!
We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. ExperienceLA all the way.
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