RSS = Real Simple Syndication, I learned recently. I’ve been wanting to implement something similar for events (of the calendar variety) for some time. There are several formats in use today to describe events, but none are as pervasive and as widely used as RSS is for blogging and articles.

I have an event calendar on my website. It’s hard to keep it updated, though, since there is today no automated way to pull in events. For instance, Microsoft periodically posts new tech chats, conference calls, and webcasts on MSDN. Various training companies announce new class dates. Conferences announce their upcoming dates and locations. And user groups are often updating information about upcoming meetings. All of this information I would like to present on the calendar, so that ASP/ASP.NET developers could see everything in one place.

I’ve finally had it with the manual approach – my goal now is at the very least to talk MSDN and INETA into adopting a standard event framework so that we can share event information with one another. Ideally, I’d like to see have a reusable framework that many people will use to expose and consume event feeds. So far, I have a few interested individuals signed up and discussiing the shape this framework should take. If you’re interested in participating and/or lurking, you can sign up for this list at AspAdvice.com, here.