Matt

Excellent update! I'm excited about this, and I think given the 100's of gallery improvement posts and topics over the years, you've done a great job in identifying where to start and what to prioritise.
Thank you for sorting the obviously long overdue UI issues, especially the navigation and Lightbox. Hopefully it won't be as intrusive autoloading. Great to see it less crowded. I was intending to add integration with AWS Rekognition to create image tags, so that's a nice touch.
Gallery has always been a good app, better than most in terms of functionality but it needed these modern updates every is now so used from the best WP galleries. Less JS is hugely welcome, even if less reliance on JQuery for vanilla JS, and finally native lazyloading; please add that throughout the suite immediately!
Looking forward to seeing more of the category, album and image layouts. Will there be a choice of layouts in terms of masonry, grid, filterable etc?
Any plans for Gallery integration with Commerce?
A great start to modernising this app. 😋

There goes the new years resolution... I want a big breakfast now 😃

One thing I consistently find is that when I eliminate parts of the community that are underperforming, there's a moment of emptiness and then I get a really good idea on how to improve the rest of the site. It's like you have to eliminate the debris before the good will reveal itself.

That was the genius of Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, the guy who simultaneously led one of the most innovative teams in history, and coined the KISS Principle, i.e. “Keep it simple, stupid.” Johnson was a renowned aeronautical engineer at Lockheed Martin for more than 40 years.

That is another good point, @Interferon! It may not be the easiest thing to do, but most times it really is the right solution. And for those that may not want to remove something from their communities altogether, then that's okay. There are alternatives such as trying to find common ground and combining numerous or repetitive categories or forums. Your audience will appreciate it, and overall, it makes your job easier with less "maintenance" and moderation of those multiple areas. If things go south and there is a bit of resistance from your community, then you can always get it back to how it was and find another way forward.
It is sometimes wise to just take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
It was, @Bethanyrayne. I did a bit of reading about him and related to this line on Wikipedia:
The very same principle can be implemented in so many different ways, so I thought it wise to use it in my first blog entry as an introduction to the series of blog entries I have planned. I believe it can really help struggling communities, or further strengthen established ones.
It was suggested to go with a euphemism in case the original wording was offensive to someone our community.
Thanks for the input! 🙂

Helllo, 
 
When will the widgets be redesigned to make them presentable and attractive on the other pages of the forum?

The current widget looks presentable and attractive to me. 🤷‍♂️

This is all great stuff.
Thank you.

These changes look great!  Thank you for adding them!
Some suggestions I hope you might consider in a future version...
Could you add a text box to the search space to allow searching by name or keywords within the event listing? I've tried creating a "Holidays" calendar with the common events...  New Years, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc".  I'm not able to setup certain holidays as a recurring event because certain ones don't happen on a fixed date.  For example, Memorial Day and Thanksgiving.  It would be helpful to be able to specify relative annual dates such as "4th Thursday in November". Would you consider making Venues not required to be a physical location?  I would love to include certain locations (like chat rooms, or other virtual locations) be a venue that could be searched, sorted, filtered, etc.   It would be helpful for an event organizer or admin to be able to manage RSVPs.  For example to add an attendee/remove an attendee or change their status (Going/Maybe/Declined)

very nice indeed 🙂

Great new feature!

You can already use stock replies for the content in the alert editor (and literally in any other editor instance too )
 

And with predefined alert titles/content too? 🙂

Not yet®

Looks fantastic!  By any chance does this tie into the report center as well?  (For example if someone reported content?)

This is really well executed. I especially like the implementation of online events, and the month selector. Really well done.
P.S:
The "Search Events" panel has too much padding The date display in the top-left corner of the larger event block also has too much padding. Although I see why you did it this way (so it's inline with the content in it), it looks wrong compared to the smaller blocks below it where it is actually in the corner. It's also not inline with its content in the smaller block. You should push it to the corner but make it bigger in the larger block. The filters on the map view need some tidying: "Back" / "Sort By" buttons butt up against the controls above, which are unevenly spaced, and the top of the "Search" button is misaligned with the top of the labels. Visiting the Calendar probably shouldn't prompt the user to provide their geolocation until they interact with something. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

Bug: in my forums when I hit "October" I still see a September Event

Hello,
I've been b***hing about cloud exclusivity for the last few months.
But now I have to admit that I have a hard thing, it's exactly what we needed to make the link with social networks and give a new lease of life to the community calendar which was once a pillar of community engagement, I couldn't have imagined better.
Respect and thank you, I would be proud to renew my license in December.
kims

+1 for SpotMe and Twitch

If not, will you allow third-party developers to that additional functionality?

Is there any mean of monetizing these events?

This is still the calendar app with a new name and some enhancements, so you're still be able to import ical feeds

Will there be a way to inject these from an iCal Feed or third party who already maintains a calendar of events. I am doing part of this now by subscribing to a calendar into the calendar app. 
What about Twitch as streaming platform?

Nice looking Event system!  I track dates for various events on my site and members always enjoy the countdown timers I set up for them.  Something I didn't notice above, but maybe a nice enhancement to get the visual appeal and engagement.  I use a custom Pages block to display mine.  Hopefully there's a similar Upcoming Events block or the like to add to a given page! 👍