Player Features and Ideas Discussion

There are a few suggestions that we have as an EVE Alliance to add functionality to the EVE in-game calendar, and by extension the EVE Gate Calendar. The following is in reference to the EVE Calendar compared to the Google Calendar:

Quoting an evemail from our Alliance Leadership:
[The Calendar has the following 'significant' issues:]
1) No ability to handle local time.
2) No out-of-game notifications.
3) No tie-in with other services.

Of the three points above, #1 is a big issue. To have ops that work, people need to know what time it is for them....without doing math based on a universal time. If I add something to the calendar in my local time, you will see it in your local time, even if you are 10 time zones away. The Eve calendar doesn't do that and would have to be rewritten to accomplish it.

Folowing closely on that, #2 is an extraordinarily handy feature to have. I get notifications on my phone when events are added, modified, or deleted. I get a daily email letting me know what (if anything) is going on and at what times. There's nothing like that in the in-game calendar.

And #3 would allow me to also include things like links to a Google Doc for people to read, an excel spreadsheet of stuff, or just some shared images. If you extend it further into Google+, then we can have messages and other things in a functional social networking site. (Yes, I have Google+ setup, yes I have some people in circles, no, I'm not pushing for that.)

Note that during the [Alliance] meeting, it was actually brought up by someone else to use outside tools for communications. So it's not just me that sees the issues....I would prefer that CCP focus on the right stuff (the game) and not try to fix something that most people already have work arounds for. *shrug* ...
--Tork.
End Quote

(Quote edited for this forum post)

My thoughts:
I tend to agree with Tork that the current calendar is underused because of the lack of the above mentioned features. While CCP has made the commitment to improving the core game, there are still resources at ccp's disposal that are dedicated to the social aspect of the game, such as the EVE Gate teams and other social media projects such as live streaming. With the advent of social media a revision to the calendar functionality would be a great EVE Community update. I feel at the very least it deserves a post in the features and ideas forum. What do you all think about the Calendar? Do you agree with the above three issues? Do you have more suggestions?