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Re: Plans for automated bapc?



Hi future-looking folks,

I've prototyped a setup for this: an ordinary gmail account, bapc submit gmail com, running Google Apps scripting. It has a calendar "BAPC" that you can subscribe to at this link. The scripts process submissions by email and add them to the calendar automatically.

For example, I sent the following email to that address with subject line "BAPC submission":

Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Time: 14:30 - 16:00
Location: MIT Cosman Seminar Room (6C-442)
Title: Rare Processes during Inflation: CMB Hotspots and Early Galaxies
Speaker: Soubhik Kumar (Tufts)
Abstract: Superheavy particles can be produced during the inflationary era of the primordial Universe. Owing to their large mass, they are produced rarely. However, once produced, they can give rise to significant perturbations in the spacetime metric around their locations. Such perturbations eventually give rise to overdensities in the primordial plasma. I will describe two late-time signatures of such overdensities: (i) hotspots on the cosmic microwave background, and (ii) anomalously massive early galaxies. I will also describe a recent search with the Planck data and evaluate the prospects of high-redshift galaxy surveys, and show how these constitute one of the unique probes of particle physics at very high energies.

About a minute later, it replied with a confirmation email and created a calendar event.

The system also sends a weekly digest email (currently configured to send directly to me, but obviously we should change this to go to the listserv). If I trigger that right now, with the one event in the system, it looks like this:

Subject: BAPC Weekly Digest – Sunday, February 22, 2026 to Saturday, February 28, 2026
Boston Area Physics Calendar – Upcoming Events
=============================================

Tuesday, February 24, 2026
 2:30 PM  Rare Processes during Inflation: CMB Hotspots and Early Galaxies
   Location: MIT Cosman Seminar Room (6C-442)

---
To submit an event, email bapc submit gmail com with:
 Date: Friday, December 13, 2024
 Time: 3:00 PM
 Location: MIT Room 4-270
 Title: Your Talk Title
 (Any other text in the body becomes the event note, e.g. speaker,
abstract, Zoom link.)

To subscribe to the BAPC calendar (optional), add the calendar in
Google Calendar using the calendar ID, or ask the list administrator
for the subscription link.

The goal here is to preserve fully email-based access (e.g. for people who don't use Google calendars) in an automated way, while also providing a modern calendar subscription option for anyone who finds that useful. This is just an ordinary free Google account, and the setup should be very stable with no human intervention needed—we can just pass down the login to the account itself for any reconfiguration or modifications.

There are some obvious todos (like adding delete operations, filtering to a certain set of email addresses that are allowed to submit, etc.). Broadly, though, any thoughts on this setup for BAPC going forward?

Best,
Ben

On Feb 10, 2026, at 12:07, Moores, John - 0666 - MITLL <moores ll mit edu> wrote:

Hi All,

Good news - we are permitted to subscribe to third party Google calendars.

Regards,
John

-----Original Message-----
From: Moores, John - 0666 - MITLL
Sent: Friday, February 6, 2026 11:01 PM
To: 'benvlehmann gmail com' <benvlehmann gmail com>;
'kdo cosmos phy tufts edu' <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>
Cc: 'bapc-future cosmos phy tufts edu' <bapc-future cosmos phy tufts edu>
Subject: RE: [EXT] Re: Plans for automated bapc?

Thank you for asking, Ben.
I am checking with our IT security team to get the official word on Google
Calendar.
However, we (at Lincoln) could presumably subscribe using a personal account
(if a .edu account is not required to be on the mailing list), which would
only be a minor inconvenience.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin Lehmann <benvlehmann gmail com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 4, 2026 11:34 AM
To: Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>
Cc: bapc-future cosmos phy tufts edu
Subject: [EXT] Re: Plans for automated bapc?

!-------------------------------------------------------------------|
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I'm happy to take point on this.

I think the last message we exchanged was about the viability of Google as a
service. It should be easy to navigate around this with some Google apps
scripting (to enable purely email-based participation).

John, understanding that you can't use certain Google products at Lincoln,
can you clarify whether you are able to view or subscribe to a Google
calendar? I think it should be trivial to set up either way, but just want
to understand our constraints.

Ben

On Feb 4, 2026, at 10:34, Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu> wrote:

Hi, all.  Is anyone thinking about plans for bapc automation?  I want
to make sure it doesn't fall through the cracks.

                                      Ken

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