Brain Dump

Why?

• There’s clearly demand for sports based calendars
• Time for a new direction
• Years of sporadic side projects, slightly updated
• Technically 10 year old stack! (CakePHP, MySQL)
• Frontend stack needs to be more maintainable, better-supported, wider
• We are open-sourcing the project to create the foundations then others can help to make it stronger and better
• Open source and get suitable engineers to help out
• Ask people with time available, keen on sports and open data
• Appetite to build their own sports calendars
• Simpler model to support structured data, microformats, ICS
• Use what we know from 6nationskickoff.com, f1calendar.com, world cups…
• Minimal data includes summary (often team names), location, start time and end time
• React, Node, (Redux?), Webpack
• Potential to create Node modules and libraries
• Deployable to any hosting provider
• Migrate existing apps to new 2 or 3-tiered frameworks

App 1: API

• Micro-service architecture to provide data
• Single RESTful API that provides JSON, ICS, RSS …
• User accounts not required

App 2: Calendar Template

• For the masses to consume info
• Simple boilerplate template to parse and output as webpage
• React app/Node
• Manipulates data to standard formats (Microformats, Structured Data)
• Reference the JSON, RSS, ICS API

App 3: Data App

• React/Redux app to manage the data
• Create and edit information

Website

• Promotional website to describe and direct people on what it’s all about
• Explain the model based on the past
• Provide history and examples (WCKO, F1cal, 6NKO)
• Founding members (Si, Brian, Andy)
• Endorsement from UEFA with customised integration
• Link to Github
• Easily maintainable with Markdown content
• Pipeline to deploy (Heroku, Linode, GH Pages?)

Next Steps

• Sound out the plan with Andy in a few weeks
• Arrange a call with Brian to catch up and get some support
• Why?
  • Re-establish tech presence
  • Evangelists of sports data with historic evidence
  • Push new leadership / team skills with suitable tools
• Setup open source Github projects and organisation from /kickoffcal/ to /kickofftimes/
• Use Github projects and issues
• Setup dedicated Slack workspace to collaborate
• Github actions and pipelines, integrate with any hosting provider (AWS, Azure, Heroko)
• Collaborate with engineers at work?
• Discuss with some other people who are interested (focus group, call-to-action on Twitter, browse other related Github projects)

Possible other ideas

• Generate images and videos from the data for social media
• Push notifications from data
• Extend API to provide event activities (timelines, commentary, standard data model for social media syndication narratives) - remember FAMEUS for UEFA? Setup open roadmap with voting

Existing domain names

• kickofftimes.app
• 6nationskickoff.com (annual)
• f1calendar.com (annual)
• worldcupkickoff.com (4 years)
• rugbyworldcupkickoff.com is gone ☹️

Business model

• Ads on popular calendars
• Sponsors from sports brands
• Setup calendars for sports leagues
• Partner with sports teams leagues
• Native apps (iOS and Android)

## Related links

• Open API Specification