The Beachcomber’s website now features a state-of-the-art, user-generated calendar of events — one so easy to use even those of us who don’t know how to work an iPhone will be able to figure it out.
We’re pleased to introduce it, as we believe it will be a great service to the community — one that will help Islanders promote events and, in the process, add to our already vibrant community.
Sound Publishing, which owns The Beachcomber, had a different calendar in place that was not so easy to use and that few Islanders bothered with. The new one, powered by Trumba, a well-known company in online calendar software, is about as easy and elegant as it gets.
Just go to our website — www.vashonbeachcomber.com — find the calendar at the bottom of the home page and hit the blue bar that says, “add an event.” That will take you to a page where you’ll find a form and all the steps for easily listing your event.
Listings are free. You don’t need to establish an account to add an event. You can post photos. If you list a street address for your event, a map will appear in the listing. And the website for the event, if there is one, will also appear in your listing, linked to your event.
We at the Beachcomber will approve all entries, so as to ensure nothing inappropriate is listed. What’s more, we’ll largely keep the calendar local, deleting off-Island events except those that have a big regional draw or have some obvious connection to Vashon. So that means readers won’t have to plow through a lot of information that isn’t relevant to the Island.
Readers, meanwhile, can subscribe to the calendar and get weekly alerts about new listings or automatic updates to their own online calendars.
This new feature doesn’t mean our print calendar is going away. We still want people to email or hand-deliver items to us. As always, items to be included in our print version need to get to us by noon Thursday, emailed to Susan Riemer at susan@vashonbeachcomber.com.
We’ll do our best to pick up items from the e-calendar and include them in our print version. But those Islanders who want to ensure that they’re in the print version as well should email us the information, as they have in the past.
We hope Islanders will find this new calendar fun to use. It’s an easy and direct way for you to let the Island know about your gathering — from an art opening to a poetry reading to a new class — and to use the virtual world to help create meaningful community.
