Seeking volunteers: please automate this job!

Posted: January 6, 2015 2:22 am

Are you good with automating software? OR, are you looking for an excuse to practice try it out? Maybe you’re a Selenium wizard or maybe you just want to learn…

Well I have just the project for you!

Whenever we host MakeICT event, we end up cross-posting it to a bunch of places. It’s a bit cumbersome, it’s error-prone, and there’s definitely a better way.

Here’s what happens today:

  1. The event is created in WildApricot (our member management system), which generates a unique URL for attendee registration
  2. The same event details are posted to our Google Calendar, with the WildApricot registration URL at the top of the description
  3. Same goes for Meetup.com
  4. and Facebook
  5. and maybe Google+… did you know we have a Google+? We totally have a Google+.
  6. And of course we follow that up with a tweet and facebook invitations

Can you automate this? Maybe we can find one person to do each part of the automation, and then glue it all together at the end? Does something like this already exist? I don’t know!

But I do know these things:

  • You cannot create events the WildApricot API, but you can read them.
  • You cannot create events using the Facebook Graph API v2, but you can using v1 (will be deprecated 30 April 2015)
  • You cannot create events using the G+ API. In fact, the whole thing is read-only.
  • You can create events using the meetup API

So it seems like API’s are not the way to go. Do you have any ideas on how to tackle this? Would you be willing to help solve at least part of the problem? Join in the discussion on the MakeICT forum or shoot me an email at dom@makeict.org!