Turn the list into a subscribable calendar

[ckenst]

A few people have asked for a way to import the list of conferences into a calendar that they can then subscribe to.

My first thought is that might it be possible to import the testing conferences list into Google Calendar. This might make it "easier" to embed and share the list (and who knows maybe encourage more people to submit).

https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37118?hl=en

[ckenst]

If we did this where we generated the list once or twice per year I can imagine things getting out of date quickly.

[psabev]

The list can be generated as .ics file on click.
ICS files can be opened by most major calendars, including Google Calendar, MS Outlook Calendar, Apple Calendar (iCal) and many others.
A sample file would look like this:
Testing_Conferences.ics.txt

Here is the same one as code:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//testingconferences.org//Software Testing Conferences//EN X-WR-CALNAME:Software Testing Conferences CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20190123T094217Z UID:20190123T094217Z-1712964846@testingconferences.org DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20190405 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20190407 SUMMARY:First QA Conference URL:www.firstqaconference.com DESCRIPTION:Any text as description for the first QA Conference LOCATION:Amsterdam\, Netherlands END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20190123T094217Z UID:20190123T094217Z-378903238@testingconferences.org DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20190426 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20190428 SUMMARY:Second QA Conference URL:www.secondqaconference.com DESCRIPTION:Description for the second QA conference LOCATION:Sofia\, Bulgaria END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR

Here is a quick link how to generate .ics files for the different events:
https://apps.marudot.com/ical/

And here is a quick reference about RFC-5545 (iCalendar) standard:
https://icalendar.org/RFC-Specifications/iCalendar-RFC-5545/

Hope this helps.

[ckenst]

@psabev thanks for this. I suppose if we had a script that could parse our data (https://github.com/TestingConferences/testingconferences.github.io/blob/master/_data/current.yml) and bundle it into an .ics then this could work. I just wouldn't want to manually update have to create those files.

(As a side note, if we need to modify our existing data layout, that would be ok)

[ckenst]

Bringing this back up because I saw a version of this, similar to @psabev mentioned on https://rubyconferences.org/ in the footer.

I think this will work. Just need to put up a PR for it: https://github.com/ruby-conferences/ruby-conferences.github.io/blob/main/calendar.ics.

It doesn't create a subscribe-able calendar but it might work for creating a calendar / updating a calendar with the important events.