Community Calendaring
OneCal lies at the intersection of events, organizations, people, and calendars. There’s existing solutions for each of these pieces but they don’t really interact well (yet). Event finders (i.e. Eventful) do a good (not great) job of listing events in a particular location (though there’s often a lot of extra clutter and poor recommendations). Calendar programs (i.e. Google, iCal, Outlook) do a great job with personal calendaring but aren’t so great at handling more than one person’s calendar (i.e. a group or group of groups calendar). Organization finders (i.e. Meetup) help people start and publicize groups. People seek to connect for many reasons (new friends, professional networking, dating) and websites for each of these ends already exist. There’s many reasons why people, organizations, and events want to connect, but there’s not yet strong links to do so.
But events (which can be organized into calendars) is a commonality in ALL these that if leveraged, can tie them all together and add a lot of value in the process. Individuals have calendars for their lives (ranging from personal activities to work related ones). Groups have private events for their members as well as public events for recruiting, fun, or to further a cause (i.e. philanthropy). Event hosts (i.e. venues) can also organize their events into a calendar. Why aren’t all these calendars connected into one?! Currently, the solution has been “subscribing” – the mega-popular events that can easily be put into a calendar (i.e. sports team’s schedules) are available to “subscribe” to. But this leaves out the vast majority of events since creating a “subscribeable” calendar that works with enough/all personal calendars isn’t easy by any means. And it often requires doubling the work – event hosts, groups, and people often have more than just public events that they want others to see so instead of having one calendar where they put everything, they need to separately created and maintain the “subscribeable” calendar.
OneCal seeks to address these two issues by putting all these calendars in ONE place and then making it incredibly easy to create and manage events – both private and public and for many different calendars, all at the same time. OneCal automatically makes your public events viewable to others while keeping the rest of your events private to you or your organization. And if you are like 90% of the people out there and are involved with more than one thing (personal life, work, different friend circles, organizations, etc.), you can see all these calendars in one place. We believe this ability to use ONE tool to manage ALL your calendaring needs is the crucial piece of the puzzle that will allow pooling all the existing events out there that are currently scattered among many different calendars and methods (hand calendars, notes, online calendars, etc.). If these events can be collected and organized in such a way that they can be kept separate with proper privacy controls then a true “community calendar” could be created. Anything and everything going on in your area could be easily found – not just the major sporting events but ANY event – hosted by anyone (or any group/organization), big or small.
That’s our mission. Personal calendaring is great, group calendaring is better (though existing solutions need some work), but community calendaring is the next big step that would make it possible for anyone to quickly and easily find the events, organizations, and other people they’re passionate about. OneCal – Pursue Your Passions.
Standout Berkeley Event (s)
The last weeks at Cal tend to be jam-packed with end of the year events. Here’s a little help in taking advantage of your last week with some events we think particularly standout.
The list…
1. Relay for Life, Berkeley
Memorial Glade, Sat April 30th 10am – May 1st 10am
Relay for Life is a 24-hour event where people come to celebrate cancer survivors, remember lost ones, and fight back against cancer and for a cure by raising money for the American Cancer Society. That Relay is just a walkathon is a common misconception! The day is jam packed with musical acts, student performances, and non-stop activities, as well as TONS of free food for any participant who raises $40 or more.
Cancer truly has no boundaries. The disease either directly or indirectly affected almost everybody. This event is about community and joining together for hope “that those lost to cancer will never be forgotten, that those who face cancer will be supported, and that one day cancer will be eliminated for good”. It is a truly inspiring and incredibly fun event. Go check it out!
To Register: http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?fr_id=28932&pg=entry
2. Cal Band Spring Showcase
Haas Pavilion, Fri April 29th 7:30pm-10:00pm
At Cal, there is a lot more to Band than rallying for sports. At this year’s Cal Band spring show, expect to see several different kinds of entertainment, from improv comedy and skits to rock bands and quartets. This show will definitely make for an entertaining Friday night. Pre-sale tickets are just $5 and are available at tickets.berkeley.edu or at the Student Musical Activities office, 72 Cesar Chavez Center (basement level).
3. Octet Unbuttoned
2050 VLSB, Thurs April 28th 8:00pm – 9:30pm
The UC Berkeley Men’s Octet is a world-class a capella team. Fresh from their performances last week in Beijing, China, they are ready to close out the semester back at Cal in an event they call: Octet Unbuttoned. The audience will get to pick the songs they sing, help them play games, ask “burning” questions, and even sing a few songs themselves via Octet Karaoke. Did we mention its 100% FREE?
4. Hip-Hop in the Park
People’s Park, Sat May 7th 12pm-5pm
The annual Hip-Hop in the Park is always a great display of hip-hop artists, DJs, musical acts, dance and more. It’s completely free and great way to spend a saturday whether you’re a hip-hop fanatic or new to the scene. Come absorb some hip-hop culture and prepare to be entertained.
5. Hawaii Club’s 28th Annual Luau
International House, Sat April 30th 5:30pm – 8:00pm
This event hit my radar just before posting on the Blog, but I’m glad it did. The Hawaii Club’s Luau is a unique event full of good food, dancing (get your hula on), entertainment, and good will; all proceeds go towards The Salvation Army for the Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief. The theme of this year’s event is aptly named HO’OMAKA’ANA, or Beginnings.
To get a ticket to this event call/text Hawaii Club’s Michelle Tran @ 951.256.7816
Bonus: Berkeley Education Abroad Infosession
Stephens Room (3rd floor of MLK), Wed April 27th 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Talk to anyone who has ever studied abroad, and 99 out of 100 will tell you it was one of the best college decisions they made at Cal. So if you’re considering, head over to this EAP workshop where you can check out their program, and learn how to make sure your academic credits abroad correctly transfer over to your Cal transcript. And while at this potentially life-changing infosession, munch on the free West Coast Pizza cheesy sticks! It’s a no-brainer.
The “Visionary Engineer”
The “Visionary Engineer” is a rare thing. It’s those found at the cross streets of “Precise and Meticulous Ave” and “Entrepreneurial Shark St.” It’s those engineers who aren’t satisfied with just the “ooh shiny” projects of the tech world, but more about taking that cool idea and turning it into something huge, impactful, and long-lasting. As Simon Sinek would put it (from his TED talk here), the engineers who aren’t just about the what of an idea, but also the how, and most importantly, the why that drive the idea in the first place.
So then, why are we building OneCal? Because we believe that people lead happier and more fulfilling lives when being active and pursuing their passions, especially when doing those things with the people they care about. How are we helping people do that? By offering a Smart Event listings/calendars personalized to each user socially and based on their interests.
We’re hiring, and we’re looking out for those who resonate with those ideas.
Interested? Shoot us a line: jobs@onecal.com
OneCal @ Berkeley
Berkeley is the perfect place for OneCal.
And it’s not because “Cal” is in our name (that’s actually just a happy little accident). We’re Cal grads whose experiences on this campus inspired us to create this company. We’re here to solve real problems.
Berkeley has thousands of events going on each week - club meetings, philanthropies/community service events, sports games, exhibits, job fairs, Greek events, Zellerbach performances, etc… and right now organizations rely on fliering, chalking, and online calendars/group websites (that are hardly checked) for publicity.
Have you ever taken the long route around Sproul, maybe plugged in your headphones or called someone up, just to avoid the flier people? I have. Getting asked if I’m pre-dentistry, pre-law, or if I want to join Delta Beta Gamma Sigma over and over can get annoying. Many of us have also BEEN the flier-ers; not a fun job attacking people who are clearly uninterested. The point is, publicity and awareness of events at Berkeley is a time-consuming and messy process, and it lacks personalization.
This is where we come in. OneCal is what we like to call a “personalized event engine.” It takes the events happening in and around Berkeley and makes a universal calendar that’s easily filterable and search-able. It then learns each user’s interests when you like/dislike events, and takes into account location and friends, and serves you your own personalized top recommended events.
Our mission is to help Berkeley students see through the clutter and find the things they’re really interested in doing - from something as simple as a weekend activity with friends or as profound as finding true passions + organizations you stick with for life. Outside of academics, the college experience is made up of the organizations, events, and people you dedicate your time to. We want to improve that experience.
Right now we’re testing the site with close friends/family, but we’re excited to publicly launch in Berkeley this MARCH. Please follow the links below!
Sign up for our email list
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Cheers,
Dhiraj & the OneCal team
OneCal
So we’re starting a blog! Now the question is what to blog about? I’ve become fairly obsessed with the question “why” and have even started to describe myself as a “why man” – I don’t like to do things unless I know WHY I’m doing it – what’s the purpose?
Thus this first blog post will be the answer to the question “why are we writing a blog?” I’m currently thinking of two tangents (side stories) I could tell – one about a kid who lived on my street when I was in middle school who incessantly asked “why” to everything and how annoyed I was at him; ironic that now I’m becoming the one who’s asking “why” more and more – and thus I’m assuming I’m getting more and more annoying… The second tangent is about Agent Smith in the Matrix and his talks of “purpose” with Neo (I’m a huge Matrix fan). But these two tangents lead to yet another tangent – should I be writing these blogs as an essay (concise but more formal) or as a conversation with you, the reader (potentially more interesting but also more long winded). Obviously I’ve chosen the latter thus far but I’ll probably switch around – the beauty of today’s Internet age is that anything on it can be subject to a large and representative sampling of the entire world population so IF we ever get more than just the OneCal team to read these posts, you readers can tell me in the comment boxes how bad (or good) you think my writing is. I’m a huge proponent of feedback and take criticism very well so if this is the worst blog post ever and you’re already ready to stop reading, by all means let me know!
Getting back on track: in my mind the purpose of this blog (or my posts at least) are to add value to two parties: the first is obviously you as the reader and the second is to myself and the OneCal team (it’s well known that writing things down helps you better develop ideas and helps you remember them, plus it will probably be cool to look back on these blogs in years to come). As to the audience and why you would want to spend your time reading this blog – it will primarily focus on:
1. what I’m passionate about – leadership, entrepreneurship, health & fitness, the outdoors & adventures, self-improvement
2. thought provoking things: good books, articles, videos & other media I’ve read/seen/heard
3. OneCal’s vision (we’ll attempt to become thought leaders on this subject) – In Simon Sinek format: We believe people live happier, more fulfilling lives when pursuing their passions. We help people pursue their passions by making them readily available, effortless to find, and easy to experience.
4. OneCal news and stories – a glimpse inside the startup
As of now that seems like a fairly complete list, as we write our first posts I guess we’ll see how
it goes!
Luke Madera
Founder, OneCal
