Planning a conference or event? The Commons offers users the ability to host a group or conference website on the Commons. Groups and sites offer great tools to help with publicity, organization, and registration before your conference.

You will want to decide which aspects of the conference or event you plan to run on this platform. Some options include (from least to most involved):

  • You can spread the word about your conference or event by posting in group forums to which you belong
  • You can create a group to bring folks together to share resources in the library and host discussion in the forum
  • You can create a site and host conference information, registration, submission, and more.
  • You can host  video presentations, share presentation materials, and engage attendees in asynchronous discussion on your conference or event site.

To get up and running easily, check out the Commons Conference Site Template.

Curious to see how it worked out for others? View the Conference Showcase Page here.

Suggestions for running a conference or event are below.

Feel free to reach out to the Commons Community Team with questions by clicking the HELP button above or by emailing support@cunycommons.zendesk.com. We hope to see your event on the Commons!

Before the Conference

  • Create a WordPress site on the Commons.  You can select the conference template (if desired) during the site creation process.
    • On your conference site you can centralize all information about your conference, publish agendas and presentations, advertise, and provide a place where members can blog and comment on other posts. You might want to select a theme with a slider that will showcase presentations and create a buzz.
  • Post it on the Events Calendar
  • Optionally, create a group or a number of groups on the Commons.
    • This can help with organization, provide an addition place for discussion, and launch a permanent space for like-minded colleagues to meet. Groups can provide a powerful social layer to your conference. Tools include discussion forums, announcement boards, file uploads, docs, email notifications, and reply by email functionality.
  • If you have a group and a site – consider linking them for better integration.
  • Get a “CUNY.IS/[yourSiteName]” quick link for your conference site or group (or both).
    • These easy-to-remember, short URLs help make the information about your conference easy to find.

Customize & Map your Domain (optional)

Does your conference already have its own domain name? Or does your department or program have a place where events typically reside? No worries. You can map that address to your site on the Commons. This provides a great way to take advantage of the great functionality available at the Commons while still maintaining a connection to your traditional domain. Users can either type in your domain’s URL or the Commons URL to access the conference site.

The Commons is open to faculty, staff, graduate students, and graduate alums (we do make some exceptions and create some temporary accounts). If your conference audience does not fall into these categories, you can still use the Commons, but keep in mind that Non-Commons members cannot join groups. They can view your conference’s public site and post comments on posts and pages, but they will not be able to subscribe and create posts.

During the Conference

Your conference or event website and group on the Commons can serve as a centralized andinfromation  space and social hub where participants can access information,  discuss issues, post presentations, comment on papers, and view related tweets.  And once the conference is over, the social network you’ve created provides a way for people to stay connected and keep the conversation going, as well as a space to archive what went on.

You can add a Twitter feed directly to your conference or event  site sidebar, using the Twitter Timeline (Jetpack) widget*. The Jetpack plugin must be activated and connected on your site and the widgets must be made available in Jetpack Settings.

After the Conference

You group or site will never be removed from the Commons, therefore  your conference or event group/site will remain archived here on the platform. You can reuse this site each year developing a consistent space over time, or you can clone your site or group to copy over information for your next conference or event.

 

The Commons Events Calendar supports individual, group, and global calendars. Designed to publicize events created by the friends you’ve developed on the Commons or to the groups you belong to (and which you choose to notify), Events Calendar provides a convenient way to see all CUNY events or filter events that are pertinent to you.

An event can the following you to see want is going on delivers email notifications about events with vital information, including:

  • Event title
  • A rich description, that allows for links, images, etc.
  • Start and end times
  • Venue (including a map)
  • Whether or not this is a recurring event
  • Commons groups who have been invited

The information is also conveniently aggregated with other Commons events and displayed on individual, group, and global calendars. You can browse through your individual calendar, or look through your groups’ calendars to find events, and click to see details.

  • As an individual, you can check out your personal calendar to see all events targeted for the groups to which you belong, and the events that have been entered by your friends.
  • As a group member, you can access your group’s calendar to find events specifically targeted to your group.
  • As a member of the Commons, you can (soon) access the global calendar and see what events are happening in public groups.

my events

Accessing Your Individual Calendar

There are several ways to access your individual calendar once you are logged into the Commons.

  • Hover over your avatar in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Here you will see a new option called “My Events” (pictured at the right).
  • You can also visit your “Commons Profile.” Here you will see a new tab called “My Events.”

When you click on “My Events>>Calendar” you will see events entered by you, your friends, or by members of groups to which you belong. The calendar grid provides a convenient way to plan your schedule.

my cal

If you click on the “Upcoming Events” tab you’ll see a more condensed view, displayed as a list. No matter which view you choose, you can click on each event for its metadata.

upcoming

The “Manage” tab is useful when you have events that are in draft, and that you have not yet published.

Accessing Group Calendars

omekaGroup calendars can be accessed from a new tab in the group menu called “Events” (see image on the right). Group calendars are different from individual calendars in that they display events to which they are specifically targeted.

If you click on “ New Event” from inside your group, the event you enter will be automatically added to your group new groupcalendar.  But don’t stop there.  You can add other groups that you think will be interested in the event you are publicizing.   You can add public, private and hidden groups, provided you belong to them.  And as stated before, the members of these groups will be notified by email, and events will display on their individual and group calendars.

Understanding Privacy

  • Your personal calendar is discrete from everyone else’s and is private to you.
  • Events you enter from your personal calendar are visible to your friends on the Commons. They will be notified by email upon publication.
  • When creating an individual event, you can target the groups you belong to.
  • If the only group your choose is private or hidden, only those members will be notified.
  • If you post from a private or hidden group, no trace of the event will display except on the calendars of those belonging to those private or hidden groups.
  • If you include a public group, those members will be notified, and the event will be added to the group.
  • All “Public” group events will be viewable on the global calendar, but notification emails will not be sent to everyone on the Commons.

Adding Events to Your Commons Personal or Group Calendar via the iCalendar API

The Commons Events Calendar is compatible with other iCalendar APIs. This means that you can either:

  • bring specific events into your group’s calendar via an “ics” file,
  • subscribe to another compatible calendar and add all its current and future events.

If using a group calendar only group admins can add events via this interface.

Adding To Your Personal Calendar

In your Commons Portfolio, click on Events:

Click on “Manage.”

Adding To Your Group Calendar

This option is only available to admins of the group. Click on the Events tab on the group sidebar.

Then click on “Manage.”

Managing Your Calendar

From this point, interface for personal calendars and group calendars is the same. You have the option to either import a specific event from a downloaded “.ics”file or to subscribe to a calendar “feed.” See below:

 

Adding Events to your personal iCal, Google, MS Outlook, or similar third party iCalendar APIs

If you use Apple iCal, Google Calendar, MS Outlook, or a similar iCalendar API, you can automatically add an individual event from your Commons calendars.  Click on the event to add it by clicking the “Download iCal file” hyperlink (highlighted below).  It will be added to your third party calendar.

Alternatively, if you would like to synchronize your third party calendar with your Commons calendar or your group’s Commons calendar, you can “Subscribe.” Scroll down to the bottom of the calendar and find the Subscribe section, pictured below:

This example is from an individual member who belongs to both public and private groups. If it was a group calendar, only one link would be available.

It is important to note that if you click on the subscribe hyperlink, you will only get the events that are currently in the calendar.

Depending on your needs, it might be better to synchronize your third-party calendar.

Synchronizing Your Third Party Calendar

Instead of clicking on the hyperlink, hover over the link and copy the URL and then paste it in the appropriate place in your third-party’s calendar. Each API is different.

Apple iCal

  1. Open Calendar API
  2. click on File>>New Calendar Subscription
  3. paste in URL
  4. Adjust settings as needed

Google Calendar

  1.  Open Google Calendar
  2. Click on Other calendars
  3. Click on From URL and paste in the URL

Please Note that Google Calendar sometimes takes up to 24 hours to refresh

 

 

Site-Wide Calendar

The Commons site-wide calendar is a great way to see what’s happening all over CUNY.  It shows events added to public groups, but will not display events only associated to private or hidden groups. You can access from the Commons home page, on the “Events” tab or at https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/events/

 

constant contactThe Constant Contact for WordPress plugin is an app that integrates with your Constant Contact account. Constant Contact is a proprietary service which provides email marketing, online event management, social campaign management, online polls and survey functionality.You can get a free 60-day trial account.  You’ll need an active account to get this plugin going on your site.  Here is a synopsis of the plugin’s features, taken from its WP Repository site:

  • Add signup checkbox and list selection to your register page and update profile page
  • Add / edit contact lists without visiting www.constantcontact.com
  • Includes a powerful form designer
  • Built-in Google Analytics visualization
  • View your events registration details and get updated with a dashboard widget
  • Show contact list selection on register page with ability to exclude certain lists
  • Automatically subscribe your user to one or more contact lists on the register page
  • Customize the register page signup box (and list selection) title and description
  • Add / edit users from your Constant Contact account
  • Add a signup widget to your sidebar or anywhere in your template

This plugin may be useful to plan and manage your campus events, conferences, and speaker series.  Also you might want to check out the non-proprietary Events Manager plugin and compare functionality.

 

Event Marketing

The plugin features Constant Contact Event Marketing functionality by allowing you to track events, registration, and registrants using the plugin. Simply navigate to Constant Contact > Events. Manage your events from inside WordPress!

Built-in Form Designer

The Form Designer is a form generation and design tool. The Form Designer allows users to generate unlimited number of unique forms and gives a wide variety of options that can be configured, including what fields to show in the signup form. There and tons of design options, including custom background images, border width, colors, fonts and much more.

If you have a WordPress site on the Commons and frequently announce or organize events, check out the Events Manager plugin. It is a neat way to manage and display upcoming lectures, seminars, conferences, meetings, etc. Each event is nicely displayed on its own separate page with an automatically generated Google map pointing to its location. Events can be categorized and tagged, and can be displayed in your site’s sidebar using widgets that itemize them in a bulletted list, or in an interactive calendar. You may also use shortcodes on pages or posts to display all or selected events. This is a great way to organize the way your site displays upcoming events.

Getting Started

Go to Plugins and activate the “Events Manager” plugin. You will notice a new tab on the left-hand side of you dashboard called “Events.” (You’ll also see that the plugin author has included three test events for demo purposes. You’ll want to get rid of these after you get the hang of how the plugin works.) Click on “Add Event” to add your first event. There are seven basic attributes for each event. Only the first two are required: (1) title; (2) date; (3) location; (4) description; (5) thumbnail image; (6) tags & categories; and (7) enable bookings. If you don’t give your event a location, the Google map will (obviously) not appear. If you enable bookings, you can let your users register for the event, and manage tickets and seats. Click here for more info on bookings.

Here is a screenshot of how an event may appear on your site:

Widgets and Shortcodes

The plugin has two widgets, one called “Events” and the other called “Events Calendar.” Simply drag and drop these into your sidebar to give your readers quick access to the events you want them to know about. There are also many shortcodes which can be used on individual posts and pages to list and aggregate events by tags and categories. Here is a page explaining the shortcodes and their implementations. Shortcodes can be used to create detailed calendars of events, or styled lists with thumbnail images.

Settings and Documentation

There are tons of settings possible. One immediate change you might want to make is to switch the date display from European style to month/day/year. The plugin has great documentation and its own demo site. As the author notes about the demo site:

This website is only a small example of what’s possible with this plugin. With all the formatting options and event settings in the admin area, you can style and format events to look the way you want them!