I wrote briefly about the idea of developing a conference planner and friend finder app for Foss.In/2005 about a week ago. We did some brainstorming on that yesterday and here is the specification we came up with.
This application will allow participants of a conference to plan their participation and also network with other participants. We are creating it for Foss.In/2005 and can extend it later. Something similar to IntroNetworks that Macromedia uses at its MAX conferences.
Few basic ideas:
- Web access, Rich client application
- Cross platofm desktop app – Linux, Windows, Mac
- Allow for viewing list of talks, speakers, speaker bios
- Shortlist and arrange talks in a "personalized" schedule
- Add personal profile details and interest areas
- Search for people with similar interests
- Contact other participants
People Finder Module
Profile Details
- Name, Email, Birth Date, Gender, Mobile
- Location – City, Country
- Photograph
- Organization, Designation, Previous two organizations
- Latest School/University
- Work Area – Drop down (Student, Management, Programming etc)
- Technologies / Areas interested in (will need a good classification here, top level + keywords)
- Involved in – Any foss project / LUG
- Associated with Foss.In as – participant, volunteer, speaker, sponsor, organizer, other
Find People
- Simple keyword search, with option to "search within results"
- Advance search – location, technologies, organization
- Auto search: people from your city (country for non Indians) / school / organization / LUG / project / similar interest areas
Match Map
- A graphical depiction of the matches. Best matches in the center, spreading towards the edges of the circle in decreasing priority (how do arrange items on this map will be one of the most interesting parts!)
- Zoom in / out and pan should be allowed
- Moving the mouse over a match, would show a brief profile of the person (with photo, name, organization)
- A datagrid view also available
Profile View
- Show all the details about a particular user. First appearance like a summary card
- Details available in accordian / tabs
Buddy list
- Should be able to add people to own buddy list
- Confirmation required from the other person before addition is completed
- Remove action possible
- Send message to buddy
- View printable version
Message Panel
- Incoming "add requests"
- Incoming messages
- Reply to a message
- Shall we poll for messages? Or fetch them only at login? If we poll, it will be similar to instant messaging.
Conference Planner Module
Find Sessions
- View available sessions as a list (or as the match map??)
- Filter by a single text field
- Add to my agenda – confirmation to add if there is a session at the same time already, but still allow multiple sessions to be added
- View session details
Session Details
- Track, Session type
- Abstract of talk
- Speaker brief (name, photo, profile etc)
Manage my Agenda
- View sorted by date, time
- Remove items from agenda
- View printable version
Two more things:
Suggestions welcome!
Contributors welcome!
Great Ideas! How can I help in this .. ?
Very useful. I like the way Ryze (www.ryze.com) implements the feature that indicates who is attending or not attending an event…. The list that you have put up here is very comprehensive.
Venky
Great Idea! But dont know how can i help ?? and one constraint is i can help only on week-ends.
where u planning to host this project?? is it on sourceforge…
Kartik: You can certainly help – you can test across multiple platforms, contribute to the Mono code and promote it 😉
Venky: Thanks for the idea! May we can have it as who else is attending this session!
Pravin: You can certainly help! You can review the things and contribute code if you would like to. We will take up a sourceforge account, but would most probably host it on our servers or if possible on the foss.in server. We will need to set up OpenLaszlo etc for this, which may not be easy on other servers.
get it running asap somewhere, and soon as you deem it production grade (i.e. won’t fall down, bite you or eat the last samosa on the plate) tell us what needs to be done to host it on http://foss.in
Sounds like a great idea, btw!
Nirav,
Nice idea. I will be happy to help! best way to get it started is to host the code on SF and start a mailing list.
hosting could be elsewhere as you say.
-balaji
have you thought of a mobile version that will display a participant’s schedule, venue map and perhaps incorporate a friend finder using IR/bluetooth?
We thought of a simple mobile version or a desktop / website applet types. We will really need somebody to take this up if we want it done though.
But yes, finding friends via IR/Bluetooth is cool.
Another idea was to generate an RSS feed for each user. So using any RSS Reader / Aggregator, he could see the contacts / schedule for him.
Another idea that we got yesterday was to generate a conference booklet – customized according to the talks you are attending and people on your contact list. We should also include basic conference info and venue map in that.
Ref. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-2005/message/1594 & http://www.magnet-i.com/pdf/delegate_booklet.pdf
As a matter of fact, there are lot of ideas coming up from here. We are just thinking there is so much to do and so little time 🙂