Create area to display upcoming events

[AARON-CLARK]

I’d propose the R Val Hub starts publishing our public events directly on our pharmar.org site

Why?

We have a new problem that was introduced when we started relying on other entities (like R Consortium & PHUSE) to help us advertise for upcoming events such as the 2023 series of community meetings. The problem can be frame quite easily: we've been sharing links that describe the meeting and provide a method to "add to calendar", but this is behind a Linux Foundation authentication wall. Because our R Consortium and PHUSE audience/followers don't necessarily have an account, it becomes a barrier to entry for most.

Previously, our main communication channel was via the linux foundation's list-serve email blast, containing a calendar invite to the meeting. Note that in order to receive this email, folks had to create a linux foundation credentials and subscribe to the email feed. So, this worked great - everyone receiving the emails already had log-in info. And recall, the first community meeting (June 2023) was apart of the R adoption series, where that group made a really nice "Registration page" for interested parties to visit, learn about the meeting, and add to calendar - no authentication required. As such, our attendance was boosted significantly.

Personally, if there isn't a low-resistance option to add an upcoming webinar to my calendar, I just won't attend it. Maybe I'm more lazy than most, but the alternative is too hard- either (1) creating linux foundation credentials or (2) manually creating a calendar event on my own calendar is too much work, especially for those talks I'm not sure will be valuable. Thus, assuming most people are like me in that respect (lazy), I'd argue we desperately need a place for non-linux foundation members to easily add our events to their cal, and pharmar.org seems like a natural spot for that to happen.

Open to hear other thoughts. Since we are forming a new comms team, I thought this may be a step in the right direction for promoting events, and helping others promote our events. R Consortium and PHUSE prefer to share self-contained links that have all the info enclosed. That way, they don't have to go chase down zoom links for calls to include in their social posts.