Allow for longer planning views up to a year on one page. One year would be pretty small on most screens, but not all. 4 months in two columns of two would be usable on most laptop screens though.

Then if you allow events to be toggled on and off, this would aid in scheduling out long term. For instance, if you had, say 12 possible events/conferences/schools/etc you could attend in a year, many of which had multiple iterations, you could more easily visualize how to tetris a schedule out of your options.