A year ago, we announced that we were looking for the next people to run the calendar. And we are now pleased to announce who this will be: Sheffield Digital
We are even more pleased to announce that they are committed to keeping the calendar going as an Open Data and Open Source project, and they will be asking the community to get involved in running the calendar.
We started working with Sheffield Digital when they launched; they were looking to provide events listings for their community and realised we were already tackling that problem. We have fed events to their site and Slack channels for a while now, and we’ve kept in touch. When we started looking for someone to run the site in the future, they were a natural choice.
Since Open Tech Calendar was founded just over 7 years ago, it’s been run by the creator, James Baster and his company JMB Technology Limited. He wishes to thank everyone who has been involved and supportive of the calendar over the years and he is looking forward to seeing the next 7 years of the calendar.
When will things happen?
Nothing will happen for 2 weeks from today (up to Tue 19th October). The site will continue to be run by the current owner (JMB Technology Limited) and all data will be held by them. This is to ensure that people have adequate notice of this change before any change happens.
Will it just be about Sheffield in the future?
Not at all! Open Tech Calendar has always been for everyone, everywhere and this will remain the case. Furthermore, Sheffield Digital already have plans to encourage the use of the calendar across the UK and beyond.
I have a user account; what will happen to it?
We made a special blog post just for you.
Nice, how many zero’s on the cheque?
None actually; the site is being sold for a nominal sum. It’s very important to us that the calendar goes to a good home who will keep it running following the principles it was created with. In fact, the calendar has been running at a loss over the last year while we tried to find the right people.
What will James’s involvement be in the future and what will he do next?
In terms of the calendar, he will be around to comment on the project and help others as they start to work on it. He’s keen to see it succeed! But he will have no special status; Sheffield Digital and the community of builders that form around the calendar will treat his contributions just like anyone else’s.
Professionally, James Baster has been working for Open Data Services for a year and a half now and is very happy there. He has got involved in several projects around crowd sourced data, and his experience with the calendar has helped. He is still interested in Open Data around events and looks forward to trying to encourage that in the future.
What are the plans for the calendar in the future? How can I support the project in the future?
In the meantime, the best thing you can do is make sure the tech events you know about are listed on the calendar! You don’t have to be the organiser to add them; in fact by doing this you’ll be helping the organisers.
So ….
Keep an eye on the blog; In a few weeks Sheffield digital will post to say hello to you all. Till then all we want to say is again thanks for all the support over the years, and see you at a tech event soon!
Open Tech Calendar 