Venue editing issue

This article may be relevant if you see the following error message from the Talks.cam website when trying to Edit the Venue of an existing Talk.

• If you were NOT trying to Edit the Venue of an existing Talk when you saw this error message, then please see: Error - Rails application failed to start properly.

Application Error

Rails application failed to start properly

Workaround required if the Venue of an existing Talk needs changing

At the moment, there is an issue with Talks.cam which means that it is currently not possible to change the Venue of an existing Talk. Therefore a workaround is required in order to inform users of the changed Venue:

All other fields (Title, Abstract, Special Message, etc.) CAN still be edited, so we suggest that you use the Special Message field to inform your users of the changed Venue.

The Special Message text is displayed in red and emboldened both on the Talk listing page, and on List pages that include that Talk.

• For instance, if the Venue of your talk is currently "Venue to be confirmed", enter something like "CONFIRMED VENUE: Name of Venue" into the Special Message field.
• Or if the Venue of your talk has actually changed, e.g. the Venue is currently "Name of Original Venue", enter something like "NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE: Name of New Venue" as the Special Message.

See below for a demonstration example on the Talks.cam website itself.

NOTE: you are free to use any other field as a workaround if you wish, using Special Message is our recommendation.

Examples of using Special Message to indicate a change of Venue

Here is an example List containing three talks, one of which has had its Venue confirmed since it was first created, another of which has had its Venue changed since it was first created, using the Special Message field to indicate these changes:

Example List: https://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/140141

Click through each of the Talks to see how the individual Talk listing pages look.

Scenarios which should not be affected

The above error message and workaround should only apply when trying to Edit the Venue of an existing Talk, the following scenarios should still continue to work as normal:

• NOT AFFECTED: Creating a new Talk from scratch for the first time should work normally, BUT you will be stuck with whatever Venue you enter the first time
  • NOTE: this means that IF you are able to enter the correct Venue when first creating the Talk, then you won't encounter the Venue-editing problem (if there are no subsequent changes of Venue)
• NOT AFFECTED: Editing ALL OTHER fields (e.g. Title, Abstract, Date, Speaker, Special Message etc.) should work normally