A system and method for creating and organizing events includes an activity stream application that captures, searches and collaborates on one or more events. The events include unstructured data comprising text, digital ink, an audio clip and an image. The activity stream application receives user input and generates a new event and combines related events into the same activity. The activity stream application receives a search query and searches for events that are relevant to the search query. In one embodiment, the search query includes contextual information that includes at least one of at a similar time, at a similar location, in a similar situation and a relatedness of event attributes.