Dr Karl Stolley

One of the better ways to test and utilize microformats is the Operator extension for Firefox. Yet despite following the specification for the hCalendar microformat to the letter, I discovered (or think I’ve discovered) that Operator’s ability to export hCalendar events to Google Calendar ceased whenever an event used the location element, unless it contained a full address in the hCard microformat used for digital business cards. In other words, setting the location of an event as “Wrigley Field” triggered the error, whereas a full vCard for “1060 West Addison, Chicago, IL, 60613” seemed to work. That is a problem, and not just a technical one: depending on the (rhetorical) context of spreading news of a meeting or other event, something like “Conference Room” is all the location information an event listing needs--it’s all the Google Calendar “Add Event” query string needs, too.

Anyway...it took quite awhile to figure out why none of my hCalendar examples were exporting to Google Calendar. And if the examples weren’t working, there was no authority by which I could write the hCalendar portion of the article the way I’d planned. It was only through clumsy trial and error that it became clear that the location element was the apparent source of the problem. And having to engage in trial and error is somewhat rare; a few Google searches often turn up a solution to these kinds of problems.

I am fairly confident that the problem was not with me--and I’m always a prime suspect, especially when Google is mute. Nor does the problem seem to be with Google Calendar, which took the simple location in its query string without issue. So that left the Operator software itself: something I do not have the digital literacy to fully test, let alone fix myself. But because Operator’s creator, Michael Kaply, tirelessly improves the extension based in part on bug reports at Bugzilla, I was able to report the strange little location issue, where it’s now in the queue as Bug 441202. (To even have the opportunity to share problems with the creator of such an amazing piece of software is a privilege I don’t take lightly.)

This is just a small and slightly too obvious example of what I have in mind when I argue that digital production is, or can be, inquiry. But it seems possible, in the best of cases, that inquiry should lead to at least the possibility of real action to help shape the medium (even if it turns out that this issue is not an Operator issue at all, but something I have done wrong). Regardless, I do think that production need not be just about doing something with the medium, like following step by step what someone else has already done, but also learning about the doing and the digital materiality that enables the doing--which is really about learning to change and adjust the medium.

UPDATE: Turns out it was a bug after all.