At its 2006 Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple Computer announced the iCal Calendar Server, an open-source implementation of a CalDAV server to be provided with the Leopard release of Mac OS X. CalDAV permits greater interoperability between calendars. This brings the number of open-source implementations of CalDAV to four, according to Dave Thewlis. In July 2006, the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (CalConnect) demonstrated interoperability between seven different calendaring systems' "free/busy" information. Thewlis discusses the free/busy demo, which included proprietary systems such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. Thewlis talks about the upcoming repeat demo in late September 2006 at the next CalConnect meeting.
Thewlis also discusses the history of CalConnect, a fee-based membership organization. Apple, Oracle, Boeing and major universities such as UC Berkeley, Stanford and M.I.T. are among its participants. Another hot topic remains Extended Daylight Savings Time (DST), which the United States Congress mandated to begin in 2007 and impacts all calendaring software and services. Finally, Thewlis surveys the state of calendaring for mobile devices and the Web, including CalConnect work on vEvent, an iCalendar extension to facilitate widespread event publication on the Web.
Dave Thewlis is the executive director of The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (CalConnect), an IT consortium focused on the promotion and evolution of calendaring and scheduling standards and the development of interoperable internet-based Calendaring and Scheduling products and applications. Thewlis has more than 40 years of experience in information technology. He has designed, written and implemented major computing systems; managed a major data center; and remains in the forefront of computers and information technology as a consultant. He has been involved in information technology standards and standardization since 1993. Thewlis has been active since 1968 in SHARE, the first organized computer user group, founded in 1955. He has served at all levels of management in SHARE, including several years on the board of directors. As vice president, he was responsible for SHARE strategies and strategic planning. From 2000 to 2002 he served as chief standards officer for SHARE, representing SHARE and SHARE's 2300+ member companies worldwide to national and international standards bodies at technical, management and policy-setting levels. Among his other standards consulting activities, Dave is currently chairman of the INCITS Study Group on Linux. INCITS is the InterNational Committee on Information Technology Standards, the U.S. National IT Standardization Committee. The Study Group on Linux is INCITS' representative to international activities in ISO, IEC and JTC 1 concerning Linux Standardization.
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