Show a mix of future and past events

Another automation we did for Programming Librarian, a site for librarians to plan educational programs, involved events. They wanted to always feature 3 events on the home page, and the most important events were in the future. If their schedule is full, they wanted 2 future and 1 past event visible -- but they don't always have upcoming events, so there might be 0, 1 or 2 future events, and 3, 2, or 1 past events.

We solved this conundrum using the Events, Conditions, and Actions (ECA) module with two views -- one for the next 0 - 2 events in the future, and one for the most recent events in the past. With ECA, we could then draw from these views one event at a time to fill up our row of 3.