NZ Yoga Events Calendar?
Imagine this.
Access to an online calendar with New Zealand-wide yoga classes, events and retreats listed. You can search by location, type of event, style of yoga, cost, or teacher.
It’s pretty, it’s functional, and it does what you want, how you want it to.
No matter where you are, or what kind of yoga you’re looking for, it’s easy to find exactly what you searching for.
And if you’re a teacher or studio, you can easily up-load your information from any computer, and embed the tool on your own website but only show the information you want to. Like what’s going on in your studio.
This is what I want to make happen, and I need your help to do it.
The long-term intention of The Yoga Lunchbox is to provide an on-line hub for the New Zealand yoga community.
It’s slowly getting there, especially in Wellington which is where I currently live. But to take that next big step, I need to be able to showcase what’s going on all over New Zealand.
Over the last six months I’ve been searching for the right events tool. I’ve tried out a few things – like Google Calendar, and some WordPress Plug-ins like Events Calendar, but none have what it takes to deliver what I want.
So I’ve decided to put the call out to the local yoga community (and web developer community) and see if anyone can recommend a tool that will do most of what I want, or if there’s someone out there who can build me one. (In which case we’d negotiate over cost and ownership).
I’m thinking something along the lines of an iApp, or a widget… something that can be used across platforms, embedded in any website, and the back-end accessed from any computer, by multiple users.
An easy-to-use web application with the following features:
- An events calendar that is easy to search based on location, date, event owner (i.e. yoga teacher or studio), type of event or cost
- When events are entered, it’s possible to load external URLs or hyperlinks that contain more information (like a Yoga Teacher Profile on The Yoga Lunchbox.)
- It’s possible to show all events, or just those in a particular location, or attached to a particular event owner, or a particular type of event.
- This means a yoga studio could use this calendar on their website to list their classes, but instead of showing every event around New Zealand, just select the events they own. This feature would mean yoga studios and teachers wouldn’t have to enter information twice – once in the calendar they use on their website, and once on this NZ-wide calendar.
- It means if it’s Monday night and I’m in Taupo for the night, I can easily find out about all the local yoga classes.
- It means if I want to go on a retreat in Oct or Nov 2009, I can search just for that.
- It supports multiple users with separate user names and passwords, who can only edit and change the events they own.
- This means every yoga teacher or studio that gets on board can just log on, add their classes, events or retreat details, and keep the calendar rich and informative with no need for any admin. The users create and support it. It’s not something that I need to collect information for and manually enter myself.
- When the mouse hovers over a date, the different entries pop up in boxes that people can click on for more information.
- It looks good, and can can easily be customized (height/width/colour/) to suit different websites.
- You can choose to view by day, week or month.
There are probably loads more features that would make this calendar tool kick-arse, so I want to open the discussion here.
- In your travels around the web, have you ever seen anything that functions like this?
- If you’re a yoga student, how would you like a tool like this to function?
- What features would matter for you?
- If you’re a yoga teacher, or run a studio, how would you like a tool like this to function?
- What features matter for you?
- If you’re a developer, is this something you could build for me?
- How much would it cost?
My intention is to be able to run this tool on The Yoga Lunchbox at no cost to teachers and studios – you do the work up-loading your information, I provide you with a built-in yoga audience. It’s a partnership and a win/win. Access would of course also be free.
The gain for everybody is one place where we can all see the extraordinary depth and breadth of yoga going on across the country. Makes it easy to choose what you want to attend! And that rocks – because it’s bound to help us get more exposure for yoga and expand the yoga community. Which is another of my intentions 
So add a comment below, send me an email, forward this article on to other yoga studios, teachers & students – especially up in Auckland! I don’t have a huge amount of contacts up there and I’m sure there’s heaps of yoga happening in the Big Smoke!
Also, send it on to your IT friends, your web developer buddies – anyone you think who might be able to help us find or build the Great NZ Yoga Event tool.
Look forward to hearing from you all!
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About Kara-Leah Grant
