If i understand what you mean by "event management", then yes there is: GNU social provides for such a feature out-of-the-box. The less-than-ideal news however is that - to my knowledge - it is rarely used by anyone. (I certainly don't use it.) But, if you have the time+inclination, try and set up your own GNU social instance and see if it works for you. Alternatively, look at some of the GNU social instances out there (see http://www.fediverse.org for list of some nodes), and try registering for an account and play around with the events feature.
No doubt, you bring up a good point No, of course all my friends and family are not on GNU social...yet. My family does use my GNU social instance for communications (though we just plan things without using the events feature), but my wife in particular also additionally plans events via text. But I'm also making new friends by now using GNU social (and yes, some of my existing friends have also joined existing GNU social instances and mastodon). Maybe more will join (or maybe they won't), or maybe they will join a mastodon instance (which is compatible with GNU social instances)...or maybe not. So, you're right, GNU social (or even the compatible mastodon, or hubzilla, or friendica, or pump.io, etc.) could not be considered a panacea for your use-case. However, I would posit that this is a bit of a chicken-egg problem (as in I can't join something because my friends aren't on it, and my friends won't join until i do, etc.)...Recall years back when "the facebook" was the new kid on the block...and folks were asking something along the lines of "why would i want to join this thing called facebook if my friends/family are all on friendster/whatever-social-network-was-popular-back-then/etc.?" Obviously the choice is half yours, because you can do whatever YOU want, though you're also influenced by where your friends/family "live" online; i get that. But, here's a bit of a weird recommendation: why not set up your own GNU social or mastodon instance...and then use it for you and your friends specifically...?
> Recall years back when "the facebook" was the new kid on the block...and folks were asking something along the lines of "why would i want to join this thing called facebook if my friends/family are all on friendster/whatever-social-network-was-popular-back-then/etc.?"
And how did Facebook actually solve the chicken-egg problem you just referenced?
I'd love to get some citations for any of the federated social networking platforms-- Diaspora, Gnu Social, Mediagoblin, Mastodon, etc.-- that link to a carefully considered and workable plan for mass adoption that any of them carried out at any point in their history. For reference you can look at the Wikipedia entry for Facebook (hint: it involves universities and enormous amounts of money).
