Improve Events page

[popovayoana]

Description
This is a major, quite big fix but we should slowly start thinking about it. The events page needs a redesign. Currently it's no different than a regular blog post page - it's user-unfriendly, it looks poor and doesn't give a feeling of a platform.

What we imagine is something like:

• https://www.ataccama.com/digital-conference
• https://opensourcelive.withgoogle.com/events/security/watch?talk=opening

Expected behaviour
When visiting ckan.org/events page, I want to see a visually appealing event platform like this one: attaccama.com with the following structure:

• an attractive menu on left side bar that consists of:
  • live streams - where we have the last event video embedded with a short description alongside an option to go the previous ones using the arrows (see example: live streams)
  • events - where we have all events in a nicely formatted way with title, duration, thumbnails of the speakers, etc. (see example: events)
  • archive - all past events (see example: archive)
• ADDED Nov 2022:
  • calendar Add a calendar to Events page #25 (note that this has low priority because section Upcoming events solves the problem for now)
  • trending sessions/highlights - where we have 3-4 videos selected by site moderator as highlights (reference: https://business.adobe.com/summit/adobe-summit.html)
  • search bar
  • filtering of events by category/use case -(e.g. internal/external data catalog, gov/enterprise etc)
  • "join our next webinar" snippet (at the end) - where users can subscribe for email updates about future events - that should be the webinar form Add a new pop-up form to "Join our next webinar" #89 (reference: https://www.ibm.com/events/think/)

When I click on a certain event e.g. ckan.org/events/ckan-monthly-live-october-4, I want to see a subpage with the following structure:

• embedded YouTube event video - video should be at the beginning like a hero image like on Google Open Source Live: https://opensourcelive.withgoogle.com/events/security/watch?talk=opening (see example: video)
• description below the video
• meeting agenda with timestamps and speaker thumbnails - like the one on Google Open Source Live: https://opensourcelive.withgoogle.com/events/cdapday (see example: agenda)
• ADDED Nov 2022:
  • filtering of events by category/use case -(e.g. internal/external data catalog, gov/enterprise etc)
  • "join our next webinar" snippet (at the end) - where users can subscribe for email updates about future events - that should be the webinar form Add a new pop-up form to "Join our next webinar" #89 (reference: https://www.ibm.com/events/think/)

references

example: left side bar:

example: live streams

example: events

example: archive

example: video

example: agenda

[popovayoana]

@Alex-Pavlyuk we've already discussed this and we're aware that this is a big fix. I suggest we split the work. if Datopian takes on the design work, would it make it easier for you to deploy? it's not something super urgent but definitely good to have as it will improve user experience and general feeling of the website immensely. wdyt?

[Alex-Pavlyuk]

@popovayoana if we have at least a clear design of how it has to work (mockup + page elements descriptions) we can start to work on it next month

[popovayoana]

@Alex-Pavlyuk Had an internal conversation - we can allocate this task to a designer in January so we'll have to leave this for the beginning of next year. Will update you on project kickoff.

[Alex-Pavlyuk]

We have created some ideas\mockups for the page, I asked our designer to think about it I need to get his update, maybe he has created something already

[popovayoana]

@Alex-Pavlyuk wow, that's amazing! our designers are overloaded and unfortunately, my plans to allocate someone to this didn't work. let me know how it goes, very happy to hear that there's some progress!

[alexmorev]

@popovayoana I need you look through and approve the design of Events page in order to start working on it. https://www.figma.com/file/yuS1whH2G8BkPMXOHfdkLO/CKAN-3.0-Design?node-id=8%3A3

[popovayoana]

@alexmorev cc @Alex-Pavlyuk hey, alex & alex : ) thanks and well done to the team, it looks good! here are a few suggestions for improvements from our team:

General impression: We like the minimalism and the airy feeling. Clean and tidy, aligned with the rest of the pages and the website design system. However, we think the Events page could be slightly more entertaining ; )
Suggested action: One thing that could make the page more expressive and energetic is adding background colour on one of the sections (e.g. on the hero section). In this way it will be a bit more fun and also will make things more easily distinguishable.

1. Hyperlink colour
Currently, the colour of the hyperlinks on the website is red. The buttons are blue. We need to have some consistency there - we either do both hyperlinks and buttons in red or in blue. I do like the suggested blue colour in general - I find it entertaining and brave but we should keep in mind the CKAN logo branding colours. (My 2c: I don't have a strong opinion on this - I'd listen to the designer).
Suggested action: Make colours consistent throughout the whole website.

Current state

Suggested design

2. Title of Events
In the Events section, the title/topic should be higher in the hierarchy than the number of the CKAN monthly event and the month as that is not equally important information.
Suggested action: Simply removing part of the naming (e.g. CKAN Monthly Live #9 - April 2022 meetup) won't solve the problem as this info helps users navigate/find meetups. Instead, we can add additional field for the meetup number (can be next to the date as a tag/label or some tagline above or below the title).

3. Upcoming events
Rename Events to Upcoming events so that it's clear

4. Live streaming
Live streaming might not be very appropriate as we have community meetups once per month. Maybe "Last session/Last meetup". WDYT?

5. Speaker
We usually have single-speaker sessions (at least atm) so we need to make sure the design looks fine when only one speaker

Some items to be added (updated in the body of the issue)

• ADDED Nov 2022:
  • calendar Add a calendar to Events page #25 (note that this has low priority because section Upcoming events solves the problem for now)
  • trending sessions/highlights - where we have 3-4 videos selected by site moderator as highlights (reference: https://business.adobe.com/summit/adobe-summit.html)
  • search bar
  • filtering of events by category/use case -(e.g. internal/external data catalog, gov/enterprise etc)
  • "join our next webinar" snippet (at the end) - where users can subscribe for email updates about future events - that should be the webinar form Add a new pop-up form to "Join our next webinar" #89 (reference: https://www.ibm.com/events/think/)

[alexmorev]

@popovayoana Thanks for your feedback. I've sent your propositions to our designers for page design updating. I will keep you posted on the results. After the design is approved from your side, I can actively start development.

[popovayoana]

@alexmorev great! thank you, can't wait to make it super awesome! 🥰

[popovayoana]

@Alex-Pavlyuk @alexmorev hey guys, how is this going?

[popovayoana]

@Alex-Pavlyuk @alexmorev saw the second iteration by accident via this link, think it's going well so far. are we going to move this forward?

[Alex-Pavlyuk]

@popovayoana yes, we can go forward with it, probably in a few weeks.