- Overview
- Data types
- Partners
- Calendars
- Neighbourhoods
- Events
- Partnerships
- Categories
- Users
- Sites
- Currently unmaintained types we will work on soon
- Articles
- Facilities
Overview
Data types
Partners
individual organisations, campaigns, groups, institutions, venues, etc. The coordinator (ideally a paid role) initially can write up descriptions of each group from public information sources, and then send the group a login to edit it. Partners can either be at an address (community centres, theatres, places of worship etc), have a service area (support lines, outreach services), or both.
Calendars
Individual event sources such as iCal feeds, APIs, etc. A calendar comes with a set of rules for how to import events. Are they all at the same location? Should each address be looked up and matched to a venue PlaceCal already knows about? Are they online? Calendars can have events for multiple partners, one partner can have multiple calendars, etc.
Neighbourhoods
UK political wards, districts, regions, counties etc (”communities of place”). This is the primary way people understand where things are and where they live (not “1.2km”, for example). It’s also how institutions run services on the ground so it matches up to existing political boundaries. PlaceCal sorts everything into neighbourhoods and allows listings based on various scales.
Events
Single event listings — just a note you can’t directly make these in PlaceCal! Events get assigned to a partner and sorted by neighbourhood using one of a number of heuristics.
Partnerships
Communities of interest, essentially collections of partners. E.g. The Trans Dimension, GMSC
Categories
Top down taxonomy of partner types e.g. age friendly, LGBT
Users
People who log in and add data. We work on a whitelist-only system: you need an invite from a local coordinator to add information. This is to keep the Nazis out. Less dramatically, it’s to make sure that the info is made based on a real life trust network and not any old reply guy. User permissions can be root (global), or based on neighbourhoods, partners, or tags (the details of this are fiddly). Note that most users don’t ever really have to log in, they just need to update their calendar.
Sites
individual frontends like hulme.placecal.org, trans-dimension.placecal.org. These are configured to show partners within a certain neighbourhood and (optionally) with certain tags. They have their own colour scheme, logo, cover photo, etc, and are personalisable by the groups.
Currently unmaintained types we will work on soon
Articles
News articles. These can be posted by users about partners, tags, or neighbourhoods. These are currently done inside PlaceCal but we want to expand so people can post by email, RSS, WhatsApp, etc.
Facilities
Free wifi, disabled toilets, room hire, etc