Having trouble finding time to meet up with your colleagues? Your friends? Your kids?
We are all so busy, but there are things for which email just doesn't cut it. Sometimes you just have to meet up at the same place, at the same time (at least virtually). There are programs that can help you do this. My personal favorite is "Doodle". I've used it to set up meetings with students, and today, to find a mutually convenient time to set up a Google Hangout with two colleagues who are just as busy as I am.
After logging into my Doodle account, I proceeded to "Schedule an event":
I filled in the title, the location (in this case, it is a virtual meeting, so our location is just listed as "Hangout") a description that accompanied the invitation, my name and email.
The next stage is choosing the dates:
...and then the times that work for me, according to my own calendar for the coming week (if there not enough time slots, you can add more):
I then send out the invitation, adding the email addresses of the people I want to invite (not shown here for reasons of privacy of innocent colleagues who are not responsible for my propensity for blogging ;-).
With this program, I also have the ability to track whom I have invited and who is still missing (this option is helpful when you are inviting a lot of people, for example, when I need to schedule meetings with my students, but since the meeting I set here, there are only two other participants, using that option was unnecessary).
Within an hour, I had both responses and was able to set the date and time of the meeting:
...and schedule a Hangout (something I will write about next week if anyone expresses an interest).
Have you ever used a program like this one for finding times for meetings? If so, please share the one YOU use! If not, do you see this program as being useful? If you use it, let us know how happy you are with the results!
Digitally yours,
@dele