There is no abstract data model for calendar events in regular use by online event services. We will first specify and prototype a working data model based on an assimilation of previous standardisation attempts and the data models of popular event services (“DEIP Specification and Prototype”). We will then productize this specification in the form of an open source Discourse plugin that will allow online communities to easily transfer calendar event data between popular event management platforms (initially Eventbrite, Meetup and Zoom) and Discourse, the most popular open source community software (“DEIP Product”). We will be offering service-orientated subscriptions to businesses using the MVP to ensure the plugin’s continued viability over time.
The DEIP Product will be a commercially-viable open-source alternative to Facebook’s recently-launched Official Events API, which provides similar functionality, but for Facebook’s “walled garden” of community data. Facebook has been investing in its community features for some time, and that investment is growing. Facebook’s continued focus on this aspect of its product means open-source alternatives need to be continually improving equivalent offerings to stay viable. The DEIP Specification and Product will be vital tools in that struggle.
Discourse is one of the few truly viable open source platforms for online communities. It’s the most popular community project on github, and recently raised $20 Million USD to further grow its expanding organisation (55 employees supporting over 32,000 communities). Discourse’s platform is 100% open source and is deeply embedded in open source software communities and culture.
Pavilion (the Applicant) is a co-operative of developers and product managers and an official partner of Discourse. We’ve been working with Discourse for over 6 years and have built a substantial portion of the extant 3rd-party plugins for Discourse, including the most popular Discourse plugin and a number of plugins which have subsequently been adopted (made “official”) by Discourse.org.
The combined Specification and Product will serve as both an exponent of calendar event data model standardisation, and provide an efficient open-source solution for event management on the tens of thousands of online communities using Discourse.
Summary (Problem and Solution)
The primary problem faced by online communities managing events is service integration. Communities use a mixture of marketing platforms such as Eventbrite, discovery platforms such as meetup.com, meeting tools such as Zoom, or all-in-one solutions such as Facebook. The difficulty of managing a community across multiple services means there is an incentive to use proprietary solutions which offer convenience over transparency and portability.
The DEIP will be both a calendar event data model specification and prototype, and an open-source commercially-viable Discourse plugin. In summary, the DEIP will:
- Define a practical calendar event data model specification.
- Implement the specification in a working prototype.
- Develop the prototype into a Discourse Plugin with support for importing from popular event services, and exporting using common calendaring standards.
- Release the plugin as an open source product, with a subscription service targeted at business users.
Specification (The Research Component)
The main standards in the management of calendar events are RFC 5545 (.ics format) and RFC 4791 (CalDAV, or “ical feeds”). The problem with these standards is that they are not currently used to model calendar event data available from modern APIs. The equivalent objects available via the Eventbrite, Meetup and Zoom APIs do not translate to RFC 5545, or to each other. Attempts by industry bodies to develop an Abstract Calendaring API have yet to bear fruit, despite some recent attempts. Moreover, proprietary services do not provide group/site/community-wide CalDAV feeds (they sometimes provide user-specific feeds). In short, there is a significant paucity of calendar event data model standardisation.
The primary research component of the DEIP will be to specify an abstract event data model that implements the existing standardization attempts, while maintaining practical usability vis-a-vis the most popular proprietary event-related services (the “DEIP Specification”). This specification will then be converted into a working prototype (initially in Ruby; subsequently in other languages), allowing for the creation, reading, update and deletion of generic calendar events (the “DEIP Prototype”). Depending on the outcomes of this work, we may seek to package the DEIP Prototype for distribution via different package systems, e.g. ruby gems.
As well as forming the basis of the MVP (see below), the specification and prototype will be published on the DEIP landing page with accompanying explanations of the thinking behind it. We will also dedicate a section of our own community to it for further discussion. We want to be an active part of efforts to bring event software services closer to the use of standard data models to improve service interoperability and portability.
Development (The Development Component)
We will develop the DEIP Specification and Prototype into an MVP Discourse Plugin offering the following features:
- Discourse Event API with Create, Read and Delete support. Update support (i.e. two-way communication) will be added in a later product version.
- Specific support for popular services. Initially Eventbrite, Meetup and Zoom.
- Integration with the Discourse Event Plugin to display events within Discourse topics and provide an Events Calendar within Discourse itself.
- A CalDAV server to provide a unified feed of all events in a community, with the ability to filter by category and user.
- Integration with the Legal Tools Plugin for GDPR support and the Locations Plugin for GeoJSON location mapping using open source mapping solutions.
Deployment (Relevance, impact and benefits)
Pavilion supports thousands of online communities through our paid consulting work and unpaid open source work, many of which have evinced a clear need for the DEIP Product, including university researchers, health support communities, hobbists, small businesses, neighbourhoods, startups, non-profits, Fortune-500 companies, fantasy novelists and nature photography enthusiasts. For a sampling of this need, see here, here, here, here, here, here and here. The lack of ease of event portability and integration is frequently a key factor in the choice between locked-in proprietary solutions like Facebook and open source solutions like Discourse.
Pavilion members will be personally deploying the DEIP Product for our existing clients who run events, as well as assisting the many open source users of our work, like those linked above. In addition to Pavilion’s work within the Discourse community, the DEIP will have:
- A standalone product website, including the DEIP Specification and Prototype.
- API documentation.
- Support via Pavilion’s support channels.
Our goal is for the DEIP Product to be a viable alternative to event management on proprietary community platforms and for the DEIP Specification and Prototype to advance efforts in calendar event data model standardisation.
Business Model (Commercial Exploitation)
Pavilion has developed a subscription model for our open source Discourse plugins that maintains our commitments to open source and supporting non-profit communities, while ensuring our members get properly compensated for their work. The model has the following features
- 100% open source code.
- Selected “business” features that are not visible on the application client unless the community manager has purchased a subscription.
- Free subscriptions for non-profit communities that use the “business” features.
- Business-orientated services for paid subscribers.
Feature-restriction in a 100% open source code base can be programmatically overcome, however this is not relevant to the target market for paid subscriptions. Businesses want to pay for services that benefit them, and those that choose to overcome the restrictions are not the target customers for that aspect of the product.
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