Gero Vermaas on...

As I described in Preparing for JavaOne I attempted to get my Treo 600 synced using Synthesis SyncML Client and the Sync4J SyncML server. Unfortunately the SyncML server and the Synthesis client are not completely on speaking terms yet. I got the sync process to start, but it never completed, tried to fix it, but no luck.

A different approach is needed to get the session details of JavaOne 2005 in the calendar or my Treo. Bert Ertman described a more k.i.s.s approach and that triggerd me to do the following. Instead of syncing directly to the palm, I now create a vCalender file that can be imported into any application that understands vCalender files. Examples are Evolution, Outlook and the Palm Desktop client. After importing the vCalendar file into one of these applications you can sync your PDA and you're done. Using some shell scripting (based on some prework by Wilfred), a little XSL and Java this was done quickly.

I now have a vCalendar file containing all details of all breakout sessions. So all sessions and BOF are included, the general sessions are not included. The calendar items contain:

• Session ID
• Title
• Category
• Abstract
• Date
• Start time
• End time
• Location
• Speakers

I successfully imported this vCalender file into Evolution and all looked fine. What appeared to be very convenient is that I could limit the number of sessions displayed by selecting a specific category. With 300 meetings scheduled in 4 days time it get's a bit busy in the display...

What's next? In the current situation all sessions are imported and there is no notion of what sessions I'm intending to visit. The plan now is to create a web application that allows me to select the sessions I wany to attend. Once selected it will then generate a vCalendar file that adds an extra category to the sessions I want to attend. In my calendar application I can then quickly get an overview of the sessions I want to attend by selecting this category.