Here’s something that I’m sure almost everyone can relate to. There’s a periodic meetup in your neighborhood or community, however, the schedule isn’t fixed to any regular pattern. You try to subscribe to important mailing lists, RSS feeds, facebook pages, Twitter accounts, you load your Google calendar with feeds but you seem to still miss out on awesome events. This happens to me all the time, mainly because there’s simply so much to follow and so much noise out there… it really is almost impossible to keep all the announcements and feeds straight. Perhaps a good solution is a mobile alert!
My email is pretty much useless these days, over-run with junk and clutter, the chances of your message getting to me via email is pretty darned slim, although eventually I may see it. My mobile is the perfect alternative, however, I don’t just give any person or app access to push alerts to my mobile. Something you might try is setting up mobile notification for important twitter accounts. I don’t suggest this for accounts that tweet lots, however, for an event focused account (I”ll use our local Pechakucha as an example @PKNvictoria) it’s a perfect solution. The next time the account sends out a message about the next local meet I’ll get the message direct to my mobile via txt message simply by enabling the Mobile Alert option in the Twitter setting for this account – very simple yet handy!