Community Megaphone and UGSS

Two great apps that work great together:

“Hey, you got your event in my UGSS!”

“No, you got your event in my Community Megaphone!”

If you’re a developer looking for events, or a community leader looking to get your events promoted, one challenge you face is figuring out where it makes sense for you to find and/or promote events.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that Community Megaphone, the event promotion/discovery site/engine I wrote, and User Group Support Services (UGSS – aka, the site formerly known as Codezone) have taken steps to reduce this challenge by integrating our event listings.

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THESE SITES?

Community Megaphone was designed as a simple, low-friction engine for event discovery and promotion. Simple to add events, and lots of ways (site, RSS, iCalendar, gadget, etc.) to promote them. No registration is required to find or add sites via the web site.

UGSS is a support site for user groups, providing event management, speaker registry, presentation content, SWAG kits, and more. Registration is required, but more is offered in exchange.

SO WHAT’S THE NEWS?

As of yesterday, any event* added to Community Megaphone will be automatically synced with the UGSS Event Calendar. And any US-based event added to the UGSS calendar will be automatically synced with Community Megaphone.

This allows attendees to find more events, and organizers to reach more attendees, regardless of which system you wish to use.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!!

As an added bonus, I’m planning to make the Web Service API used for the UGSS sync available to event organizers so they can add their events to Community Megaphone programmatically. If you’re interested in being an early adopter, please let me know, and I’ll get you set up. I’ll be posting instructions and tools for signing up for the API soon at Community Megaphone.

* UGSS only currently supports developer and IT Pro events…events marked only for a Public Sector audience will not be synced with UGSS.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2009
  UGSS and the Community Megaphone are definitely two excellent tools for promoting events. what surprises me a little bit is that Community Megaphone only offers events up from US-based organisers.. basically this means that the whole API you're building would only be suitable for those in the US... Considering how border-expansive the communities has become, with virtual groups popping up more and more frequently, i'm surprised that such a limitation has even been considered, much less implemented. The API would have been excellent, wasn't it for the limitations of Community Megaphone...

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 18, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2009
  Hey, Excellent - i honestly can't wait for CM to extend itself to support the rest of the world. Will definitely look out for any announcements you make to that effect. Keep up the good work!