Introducing the "Public Build Project", with an Events Calendar

12/20/2008 05:15 PM by Chris Toohey

I've been playing with this idea for a while now, and was just recently given an opportunity via a customer project to do it! The plan is to have an ongoing series here that details a project build, from the initial architecture phase to deployment. And as an added bonus, I plan on providing the build project application a download on this site at the end of the build/post-deployment.

So for our first Public Build project - which is due December 31st (it's an End of Year thing) - is a relatively simple Events Calendar. The Events Calendar (or EC) will allow a group of event coordinators to post and maintain event entries while allowing authenticated users to sign-up for attendance to an event. The client usage scenarios will be for both the Lotus Notes client and the Web Browser client, so we'll need to make this solution both functional AND portable.

Starting Monday, you'll see a flood of posts discussing a (hopefully) complete list of requirements as well as a pseudo-scope of work. From there, we'll start a deep-dive into the development process with screencasts and blog entries outlining exactly what I'm doing. Outside of a minor break for the holidays (or at least until the family is nestled, all tucked in their beds) I expect to get quite chattery in this space for the next two weeks.

The EC Public Build will hopefully be a first in an ongoing series of projects that hit that sweet spot of 1) being useful to more people in their base build than just the intended customer and 2) being at least somewhat interesting to you, Constant Reader!