This page describes what you need to do to be a partner of SeattleTechCalendar. For a list of current partners, see the partners page. For a full list of all organizations referenced on SeattleTechCalendar, see the groups page. Everything on this page, except those things dictated by the implementation of the calendar, is open for discussion among the community, including both partners and users.

Who can be a partner:

It's pretty simple. To be a partner of SeattleTechCalendar, an organization must:

• be a Seattle-area organization or hold events in the Seattle area,
• hold Tech-related events that are of interest to the Seattle-area high-tech, startup, and entrepreneurial community, and
• have regular, scheduled Calendar events.

Examples of inappropriate events: non-local events, virtual events, classes, events for non-tech people (even if involving technology), non-tech events. For example, events for bloggers, Twitter users, or the users of any technology, where the users can be pretty much anyone, are inappropriate. Including those events would overwhelm the calendar.

Some SeattleTechCalendar partners hold both appropriate and inappropriate events. In this case, only the appropriate events are added to SeattleTechCalendar.

Becoming a partner:

• You will get permission to edit the calendar directly. You can add, edit, and remove your events at any time.
• Your logo or name and a link will appear on the right side of the page.
• You can link to the calendar from your site or site calendar (using RSS or iCalendar) or put a calendar widget on your site. Such a widget can draw from both SeattleTechCalendar and another calendar, if you want (for example, for non-tech events, or other events inappropriate for this calendar). We can provide assistance with this if you need it.

To become a partner, contact admin@seattletechcalendar.com with the following information:

• Your organization's name and web site. If you have a Twitter account and want us to link to it, please provide that as well.
• A contact name, email address, and phone number.
• One or more email addresses (see below) and, if it's not obvious from the addresses, the names of the people using those email addresses.
• A logo which is 100 pixels wide. The preferred size is 100x40 (we can shrink your logo for you if necessary). Let us know if you just want text.
• The URL to link to. We can link to your home page, or to an organization calendar or other appropriate page on your web site.
• A list of any recurring events that we don't yet have on the recurring events page. This page is edited by hand and provided as a quick reference for people scheduling events. NOTE: You still need to put recurring events on the calendar. See the Editing section below for more information on this.

Your account:

The calendar data is hosted using Google Calendar's service, so you will login to a Google account to edit it.

• If you have a GMail account, use http://calendar.google.com.
• If you use Google Apps for Domains, use your domain's calendar URL (usually http://calendar.yourdomain.com).
• If you do not have a Gmail account, use http://calendar.google.com and login with your Google Account for your email address (or create one, if you don't have one).

If you have questions, send email to admin@seattletechcalendar.com and we will help you.

Getting set up:

Normally, the calendar is automatically added to your Google calendar when we invite you. If it is not:

• Copy this URL: http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/seattletechcalendar.com_9ko2jk3gdtn92f71t3bicm2das%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
• Open your Google Calendar.
• Click the Add button in the Other Calendars section in the lower left, and choose Add by URL.
• Paste in the URL and click the Add button.
• Note: If events occur at a different time when you edit the calendar than when you view the web site, then you probably have an incorrect time zone set in Google Calendar. Click on Settings in the upper right corner and make sure the time zone is Pacific Time.

Note: You can add the SeattleTechCalendar to any Google Calendar, but you can only edit from authorized email addresses. If you need to use additional or different email addresses from the ones that we have authorized, please send email to admin@seattletechcalendar.com.

Editing:

• When creating entries, make sure to choose SeattleTechCalendar from the dropdown in the Event ballooon. Otherwise, you'll be creating events on your own calendar. We recommend using color coding so it's easy to distinguish events.
• Editing is not restricted. This means that anyone with permission can edit any event. With great power comes great responsibility: please take care not to make accidental changes to other entries.
• Because the calendar only shows the first part of an event name, we have come up with a format to keep the calendar readable with lots of events. See below for details.
• Use the event description to provide additional information. If you need to link to your site for the event (e.g., for registration), put the link on the first line, followed by a blank line.
• TIP: To see all of your events, simply search for your prefix or the name of your group using the search box at the top.

Recurring events:

• The recommended way to deal with recurring events with different subjects is to create a generic recurring event (e.g., NWEN - Think Tank) without an end date as a placeholder. Supply a generic description as well.
• When you learn the specific subject of the event, edit the individual event and change the title and description as discussed above.
• When you save the event, Google Calendar will ask you if you want to change "Only this instance" or "All events in the series". Choose the first option.
• If the recurring event ends at some point, edit the series on its last date to change the end date. Do not delete the event as this can delete all previous of the event as well.

Preferred event format:

• Event names normally start with a prefix and a dash. The purpose of the prefix is to allow people to quickly spot which events are relevent or interesting to them.
• If the name of your organization is short (e.g., NWEN, nPost), your prefix is the name of your organization. See the groups page for a complete list of prefixes.
• If your event name begins with the name of your organization (e.g., StartPad Countdown, TechFlash Live), you can skip the prefix.
• Follow the prefix with whatever it is you think people will want to know first when seeing the event on the calendar. Frequently, this will be what the event is about, not the name of the event. For example:

  use	NWEN - Cloud Think Tank - New Entrepreneur Opportunities in Cloud Computing
  rather than	NWEN - Think Tank - New Entrepreneur Opportunities in Cloud Computing
  use	MIT - Operating your Start-up in a Downturn - Venture Lab
  rather than	MIT - Venture Lab - Operating your a Start-up in a Downturn

• There are some cases where the event name is the same as the organization name, so the event name should just be the organization name (sometimes modified slightly for readability).
• We may have similar groups share prefixes, such as technology-specific groups (e.g., SeaJUG's prefix is Java).
• Prefixes are not a rigid rule. The purpose of the prefix is to bring clarity and readability to the calendar. If you think the prefix decreases clarity and/or readability (e.g., your organization has few events and the event name is well known), then skip it.