Community Megaphone and UGSS

re: Community Megaphone and UGSS

Brian H. Madsen — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:53:49 GMT

Hey,

Excellent - i honestly can't wait for CM to extend itself to support the rest of the world.

Will definitely look out for any announcements you make to that effect.

Keep up the good work!

re: Community Megaphone and UGSS

DEvHammer — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:08:03 GMT

Brian,

Locations based on lat/long are pretty universal. But address representations do vary. Because CM started out as local, then all of US, the basis for how addresses are represented is based on US addresses. Not something that's impossible to remedy, but something I want to make sure I do right, when the time comes.

Additionally, since I rely heavily on geolocation for mapping and other functionality, I would need to make sure that the geocoding source I use covers any/all countries for which I want to add support.

Things would be much simpler if I could simply ask folks for the lat/long of a given event. But that's not really how people deal with locations.

More importantly, to properly support events globally, I would also need to provide support for non-English speakers as well. Again, not impossible, but non-trivial.

Thanks!

re: Community Megaphone and UGSS

Brian H. Madsen — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:32:53 GMT

Hey,

I certainly can hear that it's growing (eg. UGSS implementation) and it's good to see.

Of course, i could be speaking out of pure ignorance, but a location is a location is a location is a location..what would make a location, say in Germany or Hong Kong, so unique that it wouldn't be using the same parameters that one in Washington or New York would?

exact location of the event is based on longitude and lattitude afaics - only difference would be the source of the country/state/region/town/city.

I do apologise however, for the misnomer when i said that it didnt' support virtual groups.

Anyways, happy to see that it's on the radar - can't wait as i'm involved with two user groups where one is virtual and international (with roughly 17,500 members so far) so something like CM would come in handy in getting the word out on our monthly events.

re: Community Megaphone and UGSS

DEvHammer — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:03:00 GMT

Brian,

You raise a valid point. What I hope you can hear is that Community Megaphone started out as a local event promotion site for the Mid-Atlantic, and has since grown, first to cover most of the east coast, and now all of the US.

And it's not done growing, but making some programmatic access available was a necessary step to continue growing. Growing to support events outside the US is definitely on my radar, but it's a big step that will require a lot more effort, particularly to do it right.

I'd rather start small, and get things as right as I can, than bite off too much and make a hash of it.

BTW - we do support online events, including the upcoming Virtual TechDays, which will run 24 hours and include sessions in many languages and from around the globe.

Thanks for the feedback.

re: Community Megaphone and UGSS

Brian H. Madsen — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:05:29 GMT

UGSS and the Community Megaphone are definitely two excellent tools for promoting events.

what surprises me a little bit is that Community Megaphone only offers events up from US-based organisers..

basically this means that the whole API you're building would only be suitable for those in the US...

Considering how border-expansive the communities has become, with virtual groups popping up more and more frequently, i'm surprised that such a limitation has even been considered, much less implemented.

The API would have been excellent, wasn't it for the limitations of Community Megaphone...