In Episode #4 of the WP Elevation podcast, I talk to Shane Pearlman from Modern Tribe, a collective of WordPress freelancers working with some of the biggest brands on the planet and the makers of the awesome Events Calendar Pro plugin, among others. Oh yeah, and we’re giving away a copy of the Events Calendar Pro plugin, so watch the interview for how to enter (and you’ll learn heaps of cool stuff from Shane about freelancing).
Watch the interview for details on how to enter the competition to win a copy of Events Calendar Plugin.
Congratulations Holli! Shane has chosen you as the lucky winner of the competition! Thanks for your contribution and keep elevating! (October 2013).
The internet connection is much better in this interview and I’m standing up and my new sit/stand electric desk (I can’t recommend this thing highly enough – it’s a game changer).
Anyhoo – Shane talks about the six keys to happiness and balance – family, friends, fun, finance, fitness and faith. He also explains how the state of the business determines whether or not he sells or surfs. We talk about the idea of Triage and how it helps him decide what to do next.
During the interview Shane mentions this blog post about deciding to take a project on or not. He also references this presentation about how to get big brands on your portfolio.
You can reach out and thank Shane on his website pearlmanrealestate.com.
Shane suggested I interview Chris Lema and Jake Goldman from 10up. Chris and Jake, look out boys, I’m coming to get ya’.
Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below and and suggest the one feature you want to see in a future version of the Events Calendar Pro plugin for your chance to win a copy of the plugin.
24 Responses
Is there any chance that you could transcribe these podcasts into text? I can read in a fraction of the time it takes to listen.
Barring that, can you suggest a reliable (high accuracy) service to do such a thing? (stab in the dark here, I know)
Would love to learn the useful insights, but really don’t have an hour plus to sit and listen. Plus, easier to refer back to something when it’s text.
THANKS!
Mike T.
I suggest this plugin should sync with google calendar.
I’d love to see Events Calendar Pro allow front-end user event submission.
Great interview! It would be a great help if they made it responsive or made it to where it swapped to list view automatically once the screen size went down below a certain width. I haven’t worked with this plugin in maybe a year? Maybe that’s a feature now, so I don’t know. I know in the past I’ve had to do some custom coding to it to make it responsive. Thanks!
Kevin,
ECP does do front end submissions: the add-on is called Community Events.
http://tri.be/shop/wordpress-community-events/
Disclaimer(?): I was formerly part of the Modern Tribe crew and worked on CE v1.0.
Definitely agree with this! I have to scrub back and forth to try to catch the most important bits because finding time between client tasks is not usually easy. These are just way too long for me.
My suggestion is the same as Holli’s because that’s actually why I scrapped this exact plug-in for a client. We couldn’t get it to look good on her responsive site. I seem to recall we started with the free to test it and it didn’t work out how she wanted. She wanted a calendar plug-in where users could add submissions (yes), she could link to event registration (yes) for classes/seminars, and she could link to Facebook (yes, from what I understand), but we just couldn’t get it to look good and the cost was going to be too high for her to get it all working together anyway. Of course, you generally get what you pay for, so the cost issue isn’t really something I expect a change on. It’s more a limitation in what features I’d like to see when I haven’t had much opportunity to get my elbows dirty with it!
Auto add events from multiple feed sources, ie eventbrite, another blog, local events calendar etc
Hi,
I tried out The Events Calendar (free version) and I am absolutely loving it.
The feature I’d love to see added here is a Recurring Events feature.
I live in a tourist area in Mexico (Puerto Vallarta) and it is very seasonal, meaning most events take place from October til March. Events such as Farmer’s Markets take place every week during those months, and it would be a hassle to add them manually/individually.
Hey Mike,
Speechpad.com do an excellent job of transcribing audio into text as do Rev (http://www.rev.com/transcription) at around $1 per minute.
I don’t think we will do this because it defeats the purpose of producing a podcast. All personality and subtext is lost when you transcribe audio into text and frankly I get far more joy out of listening to my podcasts than reading text. I get to know the guest and the host a little and it helps me understand that I am learning from real people with experience.
My suggestion is to schedule time during the week for educating and development through podcasts and interviews. The investment of time will pay itself back tenfold.
Hey BrassyDel – thanks for stopping by – see my comment about time 🙂
These podcasts are an investment in growing your business.
Would love the calendar to work with multiple locations and multiple people … let me give you an example, I have a client who has seven office locations and each staff member in each office offers to clients one of say six services. Visitors need to go to the main website, click the office they wish to visit, click the service they require and then select the staff member … check their calendar and make a booking. To top it off, it all needs to link back to a central calendar which can easily be updated.
You did ask, how I would like to see it improved … oh and it has to be responsive, doesn’t everything…
Oh and I love the interview… some real gems in this one.
Hey Mikey! Rob from Modern Tribe here. That’s a totally valid request; you’re not the first to bring it up by any stretch. We’ve been discussing this internally and while nothing is on the official roadmap at the moment, know that this is something that’s on our radar and may well make it into a future release.
Thanks for the comment, Nick! Right on the money.
Kevin: let me know if you have any further questions as a result of Nick’s last comment there 🙂
This is a great bit of feedback, BrassyDel! As one of the plugin authors I appreciate it and can totally understand your frustration with a lack of responsiveness in the plugin itself.
We definitely have a responsive solution in the broader roadmap and already have started taking some concrete steps to implementing it. While I’m hesitant to give a timeline or anything so specific, know that the demand here is high and your concern is a widespread one which we’re looking to address as soon as possible.
Thanks again for the idea!
We are stoked to hear that you’re enjoying the plugin, Jennifer! As one of the authors this type of feedback means a lot.
You make a really good point on recurring events. We actually do have that feature built-in at the moment, but it’s a PRO-exclusive one (meaning that users would need to buy the PRO add-on to get recurring events enabled: http://tri.be/shop/wordpress-events-calendar-pro/). It was one of those features that is pretty complex to build and support, which is the main reason we haven’t yet shipped it with the free version.
I hope that sheds some light on things. Please let me know if you have any other questions!
Steve: wow, this is a really interesting use case! While I can say with certainty that this is indeed a bit more advanced than the capabilities of the current plugin codebase, it is definitely a worthwhile goal to strive for in terms of a legitimate booking/registration system, as well as dedicated multisite integration that does allow for content from subsites to feed into each other or one central repository. These requests come up quite a bit and while we haven’t taken any significant steps towards the latter (which has posed some logistical challenges), we do have ideas in the works about the former. And as I mentioned above, the responsiveness side is definitely in the works.
Thanks again for the great ideas and for your feedback on the interview. Great to hear you enjoyed it.
Hey Holli, congratulations!
Shane has chosen your comment as the winner for the competition. You will receive a separate email shortly with details on how you can claim your copy of the Events Calendar Pro plug-in.
Thank you everyone for contributing your ideas.
The other thing I would like to add here is this: I used to scrub back and forth looking for the interesting bits on Mixergy interviews and it would take me hours to get through one podcast because here’s the thing: you don’t know where the interesting parts are going to pop up! A mentor of mine told me “You have to slow down in order to speed up.” Never a truer word spoken.
The other thing I would like to add here is this: I used to scrub back and forth looking for the interesting bits on Mixergy interviews and it would take me hours to get through one podcast because here’s the thing: you don’t know where the interesting parts are going to pop up! A mentor of mine told me “You have to slow down in order to speed up.” Never a truer word spoken.
I would like to see a really random repeating option for events. You can check out calendarize.it to get an idea. Basically add the event and then just click on an calender sheet to choose the next days of the event
I would like to see a really random repeating option for events. You can check out calendarize.it to get an idea. Basically add the event and then just click on an calender sheet to choose the next days of the event
I discovered WP Elevation while listening to WPCast.FM and after the first episode was hooked. I went back to the beginning Episode #1 so I wouldn’t miss anything. This episode with Shane Pearlman is one of my favorites.
I discovered WP Elevation while listening to WPCast.FM and after the first episode was hooked. I went back to the beginning Episode #1 so I wouldn’t miss anything. This episode with Shane Pearlman is one of my favorites.