Add Events to groups

[Tim]

When creating an event, I'd like the option to be able to "tag" or link it to a group (or groups), so that it appears both in the main Events section and in the group.

e.g. I create an event for a cinema festival, which should appear not only in the general events listing for my network, but also in the sidebar of the "Film Fans" group, and in the "New York" group on my network.

[Tim]

Incidentally, when my network moved away from Ning for some months, this was a feature on the other platform I used, and it was very useful in both re-inforcing the usefulness of a group and in driving its activity.

It's one of the few things I miss!

[Evan]

Hey Tim!

A question about this feature. Currently, you can only invite your friends to an event. So if I'm a member of a 400 person group, should I be able to send an invite to an event to entire group?

This was the thing I was struggling with when thinking over how this could work. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

/Evan
Ning Product Manager

[Tim]

Hi Evan,

I hadn't envisaged any change to the invitation process (aka not thinking it through LOL), but as the current system limits opportunities for spamming the network and beyond, you might want to leave things as they are. More important is the ability to be able to automatically display an event in contextually-relevant groups (and I mean more than one, as explained above).

If a group allows group messaging, then surely there's no reason why people shouldn't use that as a means of getting members' attention should they want to? Certainly, if group messaging is disabled, then people definitely should not be able to send group invites.

And I wasn't thinking necessarily of being able to add an event via a group (although you could have a link to the Events module which automatically checks the "display in group ...." box). One drawback of the events feature I referred to on another software platform is that it makes the group the "owner" of the event, which was unhelpful, as you couldn't see who was responsible for uploading it.

To recap, what I'm really thinking about is just some kind of targeted feed of individual events into groups, to automatically and dynamically boost content there. Not all networks will use this, but for some of us, it would be a great addition.

Tim

[Vander NG]

Hi Evan, thank you for this brainstorming exercise, here is my view:

- If there is a real concern on the misused of setting up event by any member in a group (or big group), the Network Creator should consider to turn on the "Approve events before they appear" in the Feature Controls. If this is the culture of that group to have openness in inviting members with same interest (assuming that is the reason the group being created), just let it happened in that way.

- another concern may be not about annoying invitation to group members but about the audience that the event owner want to approach. For example, in that 400 person group the event owner wants to have two events which one for male and one for female, and it is embarrassing to send the invitation to a guy for a lady-only event. What I suggested (in fact I did post this suggestions a few times) is we can send out event invitation based on some data in the profile question. This may be a bit complicated in terms of product development however I think it would be a big breakthrough in NING. By the way, if you can generalize this to other actions than event invitation such as Message Sent, Share, Group Invite, etc, it will further bring the concept of "Target Marketing" into NING Network. I think it is pity that we can only export those data generated by the profile questions to a spreadsheet but without using it in all the interaction in the Network. This is a big big thing for the Network Creators to leverage this "DNA" to make the network bigger or ultimately make it more meaningful (or profitable).

Thank you.

[Tim]

I'm sure there are some groups which would also like to have private events, but I think there's a risk of over-complicating this, and there are other ways private groups can organise these and communicate them to members.

I want to preserve network-wide Events listings as we do now, but be able to have a targeted version of it displayed in relevant groups. I know I could can achieve something approaching this in one line with a link (in the text box) to a tag-based search, but it's too minimalist and displays past events first (or used to)....

[Manny Hernandez]

I love this concept, since many times events connect directly to groups (if the groups are regional in nature).

I would suggest this:
If you are following a group, as you would get notifications when someone starts a topic or posts on the group comment wall, you can get a notification when someone posts an event. If you don't want to get Event invites, you simply stop following the group. If you don't want to be bugged with the group activity at all, you leave the group.

I think, as long as the member has a way to opt-out (once they opted in) and as long as there is no way for the event organizer to keep on bugging them (or get through to them privately) if they don't to hear from him/her, it should work.

[Vander NG]

I agree with Manny. Member has right to choose... although I think there is risk that an UNREASONABLE event organizer joins every group so he/she can send annoying event invitations (or comments) to almost every member in the network (except those not in any group), the Network Creator or the Group Creator can still do something (e.g., banning) to manage it....

[Evan]

Hey Vander!

Definitely a concern we'd have to look at if we took this approach.

/Evan
Ning Product Manager

[Evan]

Hi Manny!

I like this approach — perhaps we can add a 'Groups' box to events, where members can place events they've created into the group. People following the group would be notified, and people visiting the group would see the link.

We'll take a look at this and other suggestions to work something out!

/Evan
Ning Product Manager

[Kyle]

There are many times that I've created an event and I want to invite a whole group. However, I understand the spamming concern about allowing this. What if you just allowed a group owner and/or administrator invite the group to an event? This would definitely be very useful considering the time it takes to scroll through the friend list (1000+) when inviting friends to an event. It is way too time consuming.

[Zohra]

Hi Evan,

Why can't we have group this way? http://loveyouu4.hyves.nl/

This is a group on a dutch social network, named Hyves... the groups here have their own:

- Photoalbum
- Buzz (latest ctivity)
- Forums
- Polls
- Events
- Blogs
- Commentwall

On hyves, when you decide to create an event, write a blog, uploa photos or videos or a poll, you have the choice to add this content to a number of 'groups' you are a member of.

These groups can be themed anyway you like it, you can style literally anything and these groups are each 'mini social networks' inside the 'big one'.

This would give 'groups' a real boost and then, members could really start to use groups in a professional way.

Admitted, groups on ning are fun now, but this would make it so much better.

I suggest you take a loot at www.hyves.nl , click the english flag on top of the page and try to experiment with it a bit, if we had this on NING, then we could create WONDERFUL groups...

I know this is not something that can be created easily, but it could be something for ning to work on.

The layouts of these groups are just stunning..

Thanks!
Zohra

[Martin de Goede]

As a fellow hyver I totally agree with Zohra. The group structure of hyves is just great. As a group creator you can assign co-managers or even transfer the ownership of your group. Events appear in the group calendar, the overall calendar and also on the profielpage of those attending.