How we created a community digital commons: 8 years of PlaceCal

For our second livestream we're looking at the story of PlaceCal, technology that serves communities by aggregating and displaying events in a single place. Featuring Kim and Sean (GFSC), Rakesh (Tipping Point), Jay (Gendered Intelligence) and Stefan (Manchester School of Architecture).

How we created a community digital commons: 8 years of PlaceCal

This Friday 11th July from 7.30pm BST we are embarking in our second ever livestream talking to the people and creators behind PlaceCal.

The internet is an abyssal zone for the web's sloppiest horrors: AI churn, walled gardens, surveillance and non-stop advertising. When communities want to display information about how people can connect to each other, they do so across a fractured landscape that's increasingly opaque and inaccessible.

PlaceCal is a community events aggregator that reconstitutes disparate event information all into one place. It pulls from calendars and repositories and websites like an RSS feed and lets people see what's actually going on around them.

On Friday we're telling PlaceCal's story and the stories of its creators. Joined by Professor Stefan White from the Manchester School of Architecture, Dr Jay Stewart from Gendered Intelligence, Rakesh Prashara from Tipping Point, Dr Kim Foale from Geeks For Social Change and hosted by Sean Morley (the platonic ideal of a normal guy) we're going to collectively build a biography of a technology. What has PlaceCal achieved? Where has it struggled? And what comes next?

You can join us at our Twitch channel from 7.30pm BST this Friday to ask questions and take part in the discussion.