I’m going to SXSW this year (in fact, this weekend) and I was looking around for an online calendar that might help me plan which panels I was going to. (South by Southwest, in case you might not be familiar with it, is a music, film, and interactive festival/conference in Austin, Texas.) The sxsw.com website usually has a semi-usable calendar, but I just couldn’t get it to work this year.
Some friends of mine mentioned a third-party calendaring option, Sched.org, and I thought I’d give that a shot. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, it’s great — it’s easy to use, intuitive, and uses just enough Ajax to be helpful without getting in the way. Anyhow, I’ve worked out my calendar and I think I’ve figured out most of the panels that I’d like to go to. As you might guess, if you see two panels listed for the same time slot, it means that I like both of them and just haven’t yet figured out which to go to. For instance, like these:
Saturday, March 8: Getting Unstuck: From Desktop to Device vs Opening Remarks with Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson (both at 2 p.m.)
Sunday, March 9: Scope Creep and Other Villains vs Wireframing in a Web 2.0 World (both at 10 a.m.)
Monday, March 10: Targeting Your Web Site: Accessibility Litigation Update vs WaSP Annual Meeting: Don't Break the Web (both at 5 p.m.)
Of course, I’m open to ideas if you have any suggestions on resolving those stalemates. One way or another, I’ll figure things out :).