Volunteer needed to automate the Boston area physics calendar

[Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>]

Hi, Boston area physics calendar subscribers.  The bapc is in trouble.
It seems the best hope for keeping such a calender going is to have an
automated system where schools could enter their events in an online
calendar and mailings would be sent out automatically.  But I don't have
the time to develop such a system.  So it would be great to have some
volunteer who could work on such a project.

Here are the details:

I've been been maintaining the mailing list for this calendar since
1999.  There was a rotation of schools, each serving for two years,
managing the receipt of postings and assembling them into a single
calendar posting.  Tufts did it last year.  This year it should have
gone on to Boston College but they refused to do it.  They said that
they have not been listing their talks on the BAPC for several years.
Next in the rotation would have been MIT, but they said they wouldn't do
it either.  So the current plan does not seem viable.

Jake Mandel here at Tufts going to do the calendar until June.  After
that, we will need a different plan.  Otherwise there will be no bapc
next academic year.

In recent years, the number of listings has gone down.  But there are
560 email addresses subscribed to this calendar.  So it seems there are
a lot of people who find it valuable.  I certainly think it's very
useful to have something that ties together the different area schools.

Everyone seems to agree that the best plan would be an automated system,
where there isn't a single person putting together listings by hand.
This would consist of some calendar program into which different schools
could enter information about their events.  People could then include
this calendar in their personal calendars, and the system would send a
weekly email to those who are interested.  There would also be a way to
send email about talks that were canceled or moved, as we do now.

I don't think this is terribly difficult, but I don't have the time to
set it up myself.  I'm happy to discuss the design, to supervise it once
it is set up, and to maintain the email list as I have been doing.  So
if you think you could set up such a system, or you have a student who
could be encouraged to do it, please let me know.

I think the 560 subscribers to this list would probably not appreciate a
high volume of discussion, so please just reply to me.  I'll forward
anything that anyone sends to other people who express interest, and if
a lot of discussion develops, perhaps I'll create a bapc-future mailing
list, or something like that.

                                        Ken