Tech Forum

I'm trying to convince our agent bishop that permitting the various wards to schedule the building directly is a Good Thing that we should be encouraging, rather than remaining on the system of having a single building scheduler placing all of the stake center-related activities on a stake calendar, with her paper calendar being the only official calendar. Any anecdotes about leaders being able to better minister would be appreciated.

I could go on and on about the benefits of the new system, but the biggest difference is visibility. When you have one scheduler with a paper calendar, only she can see the events. It works fine if your only goal is to reserve the building and avoid conflicts. But no one else can see the calendar.

With the new system, everyone can see the calendars they want to see. So our high councilors know when to come to Stake PEC; our young men know when to come play basketball; our Relief Society sisters know when the General RS Broadcast is, and if there's a dinner scheduled beforehand. Everyone can see where the event takes place and what date and time, and other details about the event.

Lots of people have smartphones that sync with the calendar (which lets them also set alarms for events); others go to LDS.org to see the calendar; ward bulletin editors can go to LDS.org to see the events and summarize the upcoming events in the weekly ward bulletin.

There are benefits to the distributed scheduling as well, but if I were to pick the biggest benefit, it is that the entire ward and stake can see the events.

What I like about the new system is that it syncs to my own personl calendar. I don't have to input any changes. It just automatically appears on my smartphone.