How can I create a custom event?

I apologize if this was mentioned in the docs or the wikis, I could not find something that would help me. Basically, I would like to create and fire a custom event from my data model so that the grid can listen to it and do something when it fires. Is this possible?

By the way, are there any plans to improve the docs and the wikis? It's extremely hard to find how to do something currently.