2012.05.10
Meet our new calendar tool, comments welcome
Today's Inside Out cover
Today’s Inside Out cover officially introduces our new calendar tool, which is only about a month old. So that means it’s a work in progress!
Here are some new features we’re excited about:
- For people looking for events, we now have convenient filters you can use — free, 21+, kid-friendly (the blue smiley face), and Editor’s Picks — to help sort through the listings.
- For venues submitting events, they can now create a venue page so that they only have to submit the venue’s basic information once. We also streamlined our categories to make it easier to know where events best fit.
While we are happy to share this new tool, keep this in mind as you test it out:
1. It works best with Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox browsers. At this time, we don’t recommend accessing the calendar with Safari or Chrome. If you’re a Mac user, you can download a Firefox for Mac for free here.
2. Please share your thoughts on this blog post, or email events@roanoke.com.
3. Again, it is only a few weeks old and we expect there will be glitches as more people use it. Just keep us informed if you come across any problems.
Honestly, so far I liked the old one better. I’m sure that’s partly just familiarity, though. It’s still better than most other sites I’ve used.
One thing I will mention is that the new categories aren’t always intuitive. To me “Get out” and “Get Mingling/Connected” often mean the same thing. And what’s the dividing line between “Out” and “Cultured” –does a symphony performance count as culture, or night-life, or both?
Comment by Mark — May 10, 2012 @ 10:21 am
Thanks Mark, for the comment.
Right now, Get Out is considered our “general events” listing. Something like a symphony performance would fit under Get Cultured, because it’s more of an arts & culture event.
As for Get Mingling/Connected, that’s currently for community events, like church and neighborhood association events.
But I see how the distinctions can be blurry. Do you have any suggestions on what kind of wording would make it clearer? Thanks!
Comment by Kathy Lu — May 10, 2012 @ 10:48 am
Hi, folks, this is Kathy.
Wanted to let you know that we are aware that the calendar tool is acting slow. We are working on it. Thanks!
Comment by Kathy Lu — May 10, 2012 @ 12:04 pm
Well I prefer the “Get Connected” on the main page over the “Get Mingling/Connected” on the check-box dialog, for a start. (Of course I’d just as soon drop the whole “get” theme and go back simple, straightforward descriptors like “Community”, but that’s just how my brain works.)
I guess “Get out” is the heart of the problem for me, since it could easily encompass everything in the calendar. I get that it’s meant to be a catch-all, but for me initially it ‘caught’ a little too much; I wasn’t sure if it was a specific category or some sort of “all of the above” meta-category.
Comment by Mark — May 10, 2012 @ 1:12 pm