You can do this in SimpleXML using a little hack I wrote up plus a little CSS to specify the icon. It is very easy to do and avoids learning advanced XML. See this answer
You can display images and icons in tables with Sideview Utils, and without any custom code. This requires switching to the advanced xml, but if you also switch to Sideview Utils at the same time it's not nearly as bad a transition. Here's a 10min screencast and demo to try and convince you of that.
If instead you want to display the event text and embed icons in there, you can do this with the Sideview Multiplexer module. (Also without any custom code but you might want some custom CSS)
Note that both of these Sideview features are pretty advanced! There are extensive docs and working examples for them, but you'll want to put in some time understanding how the more straightforward modules and techniques work first.