Does Your Calendar Help You Get Lucky?

One of my favorite tables at Web Innovators this week was the one run by the folks at LuckyCal. It's hard not to like a site that offers a way for your calendar to help you get lucky.

LuckyCal is a simple idea with decent execution. It assumes that when you are out and about at an event, you might like to meet anyone else you know who might be in the area. If you have set the settings of the event to do so, LuckyCal will send both you and friends who match notifications that you are near each other.

It seemed invasive when I first heard about it. After all if LuckyCal is notifying people where you are it could be abused, right? Wrong, actually. The creators of LuckyCal have taken a few steps to keep you in control of who you are matched with and how.

For one thing, when you add the LuckyCal FaceBook application or import your friends from Gmail or Outlook, LuckyCal gives you ways to select which friends to invite. This means that from the start you have control over your connections and who is notified when you match. You only invite people you really want to connect with into your circle of friends.

The whole process starts by sharing calendars. You can grab your existing calendar from nearly any calendar that uses iCal technology. I grabbed mine from iCal on my MacBook, but I could have also chosen my Google Calendar or any similar one to import and link. Adding the calendar took no time at all.

Once you add the calendar and your friends, a simple process that took about five minutes total for me (I have a lot of Gmail contacts and FaceBook friends to weed through), you can move to adding interests. The easiest way to add interests is to add the FaceBook application. LuckyCal then scans your profile page for interests, concentrating on the interests section.

Once you have added a few interests, LuckyCal uses your location and interests to generate a list of events happening in your area that you might find interesting or useful. If you like the groups or events it puts up, you can add them, or you can skip this part until later. You also have the opportunity to add interests manually if you find your results less than comprehensive.

Once everything is in place and your friends have gotten on board with LuckyCal, you'll start to notice your calendar become more dynamic. Each time you add an event you are given a chance to leave it publicly viewable by all of your friends who match with you for that event, to skip matching altogether, or to only show you the matches. The last option allows you to pick and choose who you notify manually, great for conventions and larger events where there are too many people to get together with at once.

How does the matching work? LuckyCal assumes that if an event is one your calendar, you will be in that area at that time. It then looks for friends on your list who will also be in that area at the same time. For public events it automatically lets both of you know. For events set to private it ignores any matches, and if an event is set to semi private it only notifies you, freeing you to contact the suggested person or not, at your leisure, without them knowing about the match. This goes far in avoiding potential hurt feelings if you don't have time to connect.

I really like this application, and I'll get to put it through its paces in a big way during PodCamp3 Boston this weekend. I'll be there to present a session on Sunday and to participate in sessions both Saturday and Sunday, and I'm excited to use LuckyCal to find and connect with my friends in the area during my off time. It already has been fun to play with locally, and has suggested some great events near me I hadn't heard about as well. Overall, this sit gets an enthusiastic thumbs up from me, though I'd like to see it integrate with Upcoming in addition to its current calendar roster of Ticketmaster, FaceBook, Sunbird, Outlook, Google and iCal.

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