Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

[treefort]

I'd like to create a Google Calendar that lists all the talks and events at Defcon so I can sync it up with the calendar on my phone. I'd imagine many of you would also find this useful, so I'd be glad to make the calendar public and share the URL.

It's a little too much data to transpose by hand, but if someone has the schedule in a delimited format, I could write a script to parse/convert it.

Oh, and does this already exist?

[incudie]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

I'm not willing the spend the time to input the data, but I would love to take advantage of the calendar if it's made =)

[Xeon]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

I don't know how regular of a format you want, but the main schedule page is fairly regular in its formatting.

There is a span with class="time" and the time in 24hr format.
Then, for each room, there is a list item, the name of the room is in an h5 tag (which also has the hr tag in it). Then an anchor tag, with the class "schedTitle" (the title of the talk). That is followed by the description and "Until: XX:XX" indicating the end time right before the attribute icons, then the close list item.

Repeat for each event at that time, then close the unordered list.

A simple PERL script could turn this all into delimited data. If compiling takes long enough tomorrow, I will try to write one up then and post the results here.

<ul class="scheduleRoom"><h2 class="title">Friday Speaking Schedule</h2><hr><br>
	<span class="time">10:00</span>
    <hr>
    <li><h5>Track 1<hr></h5> <a class="schedTitle" href="dc-18-speakers.html#Keynote">Keynote</a><br> Top Secret<br> Until: 10:50</li>          
        <li><h5>Track 2<hr></h5> <a class="schedTitle" href="dc-18-speakers.html#Vixie">SIE Passive DNS and the ISC DNS Database</a><br> Paul Vixie<br> Until: 10:50<br>

<img class="schedIcon" src="../../images/defcon-18/demo-icon.png" title="demo">  
<img class="schedIcon" src="../../images/defcon-18/xploit-icon.png" title="exploit">
</li>          
        <li><h5>Track 3<hr></h5> <a class="schedTitle" href="dc-18-speakers.html#Hofmann">How To Get Your FBI File (and Other Information You Want From the Federal Government)</a><br>Marcia Hofmann <br>Until: 10:50  </li>          
        <li><h5>Track 4<hr></h5>
		<a class="schedTitle" href="dc-18-speakers.html#Grand">Welcome and Making the DEF CON 18 Badge</a><br>Dark Tangent, Joe Grand<br>
        Until: 11:50<br>

		</li>         
        <li><h5>Track 5<hr></h5> <a class="schedTitle" href="dc-18-speakers.html#PaneloCTF">oCTF: 5 years in 50 minutes</a><br>Panel <br> Until: 10:50</li>      
</ul>

[treefort]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

I was hoping that it wouldn't have to come down to parsing the HTML, but I agree that it could be done -- albeit with a little more data "hand-holding" than I'd prefer...

Let me know how you fare tomorrow, I'm completely distracted with SL4A tonight. :D

[Voltage Spike]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

You may want to check with those that have done this before.

Search for "ical" on the forums to find a lot more talk about the subject.

[Xeon]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

I was hoping that it wouldn't have to come down to parsing the HTML, but I agree that it could be done -- albeit with a little more data "hand-holding" than I'd prefer...

Let me know how you fare tomorrow, I'm completely distracted with SL4A tonight. :D

Well, as of now, it is all we have. I'm excited for an excuse to just write some PERL. Been doing the c++ thing for far too long. I'm not even able to go to DC this year, so I need to make my own fun instead.

[Xeon]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

Code is compiling rather quickly today....blast!

[treefort]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

Code is compiling rather quickly today....blast!

Slow that crap down. Include some unnecessary libraries or something :D

[Xeon]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

Done! I had to debug a seg fault in some really slowly compiling code!

Format is:

[day]\t[start as hh:mm]\t[room #]\t[talk title]\t[until as hh:mm]?\t[demo]?\t[tool]?\t[exploit]?

As you may have guessed, a ? after something means it might not be there. There should be no additional tabs after the last valid item in a row. There will be two tabs in a row if "tool" is not there but "demo" and "exploit" are (and in other similar situations).

Example:

Friday	10:00	Track 2	SIE Passive DNS and the ISC DNS Database	10:50	demo		exploit

http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0t6...thkey=COLr8L0M

Due to formatting inconsistencies, I regret that speaker names and panelist names are omitted. No offense to the speakers, without them we wouldn't have much of a con!

Also, you will have to rely on the until field as I did not include any "(con't)" entries.

[Nikita]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

The schedule is mobile friendly from the DC site.
Also, there is a Mobile Ap for iPhone and there is another site made by the DC networking team that displays the schedule and what is going on at any given moment.
So....the info is kinda already done for you. Jus saying. More info on those will be posted soon on the DC site.

[greatscott]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

The schedule is mobile friendly from the DC site.
Also, there is a Mobile Ap for iPhone and there is another site made by the DC networking team that displays the schedule and what is going on at any given moment.
So....the info is kinda already done for you. Jus saying. More info on those will be posted soon on the DC site.

Hmmm first I've heard of the iPhone apps (are there Android versions too?). I might suggest some semi-periodic promo-blasts via twitter/facebook about it.

Playing devil's advocate, having the calendar in GCal format might be nice for the Android users. You can sync google cals directly with the android calendar app.

[AlxRogan]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

The schedule is mobile friendly from the DC site.
Also, there is a Mobile Ap for iPhone and there is another site made by the DC networking team that displays the schedule and what is going on at any given moment.
So....the info is kinda already done for you. Jus saying. More info on those will be posted soon on the DC site.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/defcon/id325007661?mt=8 I'm guessing this is the _the_ iphone app?

[theprez98]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/defcon/id325007661?mt=8 I'm guessing this is the _the_ iphone app?

That was the one from last year and it appears to have been updated so I believe yes that is _the_ app.

And according to Nikita's comments on the app page is the official app. :-)

[Nikita]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

Yeah, that's the iPhone app alright. Soon as Apple approves the new update and the developer ( @DtJedi ) sends us the green light we will be posting it on the DC site. It was an amazing help to me last year to use the app, it's really detailed, fun, has all your info on it. Loved it and so did all the beta testers.

Important to know tho. Neil designed the DC website to be mobile friendly and scalable. So even if you are on a crappy old phone the schedule will pull up and be readable.

Next up for you android and Black berry users, the DC Networking team have a mobile website for you to use as well. They posted information about it here. I've seen the beta ( from my android too) and it looks great.
See their site here: http://www.defconnetworking.org/

Once networking send us the green light we will publish that as well.

Also...info booth has a great schedule format, I will see if they use ical and then maybe see if we can post a link to import it. There will be two large info booth screens, a few tvs in the halls, and the ticker thingy that display what's going on, and the printed program this year will be passport pocket sized for you to put in your pocket or man purse. Also...the schedule has not changed a bit since publication...so....(knock on wood) everything should be just AOK.

Don't forget to also follow us on Twitter @_defcon_ and I think networking has some information on a foursquare as well. And lastly...let me pimp out the qik. Follow it. http://qik.com/_defcon_ As usual I will be running around posting video of stuff you need to come see and posting the links via twitter, info booth, etc.

Yours Truly,
Nikita

[TheCotMan]

Re: Defcon 18 Schedule as Google Calendar

Hmmm first I've heard of the iPhone apps (are there Android versions too?). I might suggest some semi-periodic promo-blasts via twitter/facebook about it.

Playing devil's advocate, having the calendar in GCal format might be nice for the Android users. You can sync google cals directly with the android calendar app.

As someone that has worked to build an ical export tool for forum events, I will say that it is more work than building java apps for JVM to work reliably on all platforms and versions of JVM.

Last time I looked at this was 2 years ago, but ABSOLUTELY NONE of the calendar clients that claimed to support the ical RFC actually provided PROPER compliance in following the RFC, including items like "MUST" not just "SHOULD."

Perhaps the world of ical has become better. I filed bugs against lightning until I realized it was a crap-shoot. After 3 or maybe 4 years, they finally got around to claiming a fix for one of the failure to comply with the RFC. I've done this with other calendar tools, and just gave up notifying all the different developers of the failures in their product.

Why did I start? Oh. I had the same dream that many of you probably consider now. Give the few people that run Defcon access to use whatever ical client they want to schedule events and publish them to a WebDAV share (WebDAV over HTTPS, for example) and then each department that handles scheduling can build and publish their own ical of events. This way, say the Fire Marshal does not clear the space, and presentations are pushed back 2 hours, the goons in charge of presentations can use their ical client, click, highlight, and drag down all presentations events 2 hours, republish, and NOW everyone is informed of the updated schedule. Goons that runs the contest area could do the same. Same with other similar events. Everyone that runs something published a calendar. Everyone subscribed to the file can force refresh to get the latest schedule. Even better? All of the calendars could be aggregated to build one super-defcon calendar of all events. Even better? People could actually send *meeting* requests to each other to choose to meet as a presentation or contest, and as things change, if a conflict arises, they will see it when they refresh.

Oh yes. This could be super-awesome for organizing something as chaotic as Defcon. (But then here is a question... do we really want to destroy scheduling chaos at Defcon? ;-)

There is good news, though. For the most simple of events in ical which do not repeat, do not reference timezones, and do not use any special tags like the geo:long/lat, you stand the greatest chance for the ical result to be importable in all or most of the common ical clients out there. But auto-updates are a crap-shoot, because many clients are idiotic when they get an update to an existing event by UID and again don't follow the RFC.

I also had an idea to build a tool to parse an ical file and generate or update *forum* events, which are already exported as ical using another tool I made. Then I saw a nightmare. If you think failure to follow RFC for import by ical clients was a problem, you should see what they export with a claim to follow the RFC. Gah. You could create a complex repeating event with Apple's iCal tool, export it as ics, then import it into outlook or lightning, or one of many different "ical apps" and they'd all show different days one different days of the year.

When tools fail to follow RFC to import, you are screwed. When tools fail to follow RFC on export, too? Welcome to insanity.