Tech Forum

Our stake (and wards) is well into the 2015 planning process and we have entered many events for the 2015 year. However, churchwide events, such as General Women's Broadcasts, General Conference, etc. do not appear in the Churchwide events calendar. This had generated a lot of questions and inefficiencies with respect to the planning process.

We have determined when these events occur and are placing restrictions and events on the calendar. When they eventually added to the Churchwide calendar, we'll have to remember to remove the events (but not the restrictions) from our Stake calendar. It would be helpful if church headquarters could enter these events before the planning process starts.

smconvey wrote:When they eventually added to the Churchwide calendar, we'll have to remember to remove the events (but not the restrictions) from our Stake calendar. It would be helpful if church headquarters could enter these events before the planning process starts.

Personally, I find the Churchwide calendar to be next to useless, and I never rely on it. I find it hard to believe that any stake is able to rely on it either, even if it were promptly configured with events for the coming year.

The main reason I say this is that the Churchwide calendar has no ability to schedule our buildings. Another reason that affects many units is that the time when the event happens in Salt Lake City may not be the time it occurs locally. So in order to schedule a building at the correct time, we have to schedule an event on a stake calendar anyway. The dates and times are published on the broadcast schedule, so I've always just created stake events. It's the Churchwide events I wish I could remove, not the stake events.

It sounds like you use restrictions to book the building for broadcasts, but let the event on the Churchwide calendar be the way you communicate to members when the event happens. I see two problems with that: first, the time may not match. But even if it does, a Churchwide calendar can't tell members where to come to attend the broadcast. I find that to be an unacceptable limitation, so that's why a stake event is better. With stake events entered promptly for these broadcasts, there is no confusion, and no inefficiency on the ward side of things. And if you ignore the Churchwide calendar as I do, there's no inefficiency on the stake side, either.

aebrown wrote:Personally, I find the Churchwide calendar to be next to useless, and I never rely on it.

Valid points, but I think the desire here is for planning purposes to see that there is a church-wide event that might affect local events. Certainly, General Conference disrupts the normal flow of Fast Sundays and events tied to Fast Sunday. I think the desire is to have an authoritative listing to help other leaders plan their events and exceptions to repeating events.

I think most of this can be handled by taking the Satellite Broadcast schedule and entering all of those events into the stake calendar. (If it's not broadcast, does it really occur? ) That takes care of the building use (at least for the stake center) and any local time-shift. Wards need to be mindful of anything on the stake calendar when they do their planning, so they should be fine with that.

russellhltn wrote:

aebrown wrote:Personally, I find the Churchwide calendar to be next to useless, and I never rely on it.

Valid points, but I think the desire here is for planning purposes to see that there is a church-wide event that might affect local events.

That's exactly what my solution of stake events accomplishes (and what the Churchwide calendar doesn't, since it doesn't book the building).

aebrown wrote:

russellhltn wrote:

aebrown wrote:Personally, I find the Churchwide calendar to be next to useless, and I never rely on it.

Valid points, but I think the desire here is for planning purposes to see that there is a church-wide event that might affect local events.

That's exactly what my solution of stake events accomplishes (and what the Churchwide calendar doesn't, since it doesn't book the building).

I disagree that the Churchwide calendar is useless. Long-term planning is a primary benefit. Having these events pre-populate is a simple time-saver (one less thing to worry about), and a prompt to remember to restrict the building. Who wants to go find a broadcast list (that may be subject to change).

aebrown wrote:The main reason I say this is that the Churchwide calendar has no ability to schedule our buildings.

For long-term planning purposes having it on the calendar is far more important that having the location scheduled.

aebrown wrote:...the time when the event happens in Salt Lake City may not be the time it occurs locally.

The time is correct for our Stake: In fact, it seems kind of ridiculous that the calendar technology wouldn't be able to adjust for time zones.

smconvey wrote:

aebrown wrote:...the time when the event happens in Salt Lake City may not be the time it occurs locally.

The time is correct for our Stake:

GenConf.PNG

In fact, it seems kind of ridiculous that the calendar technology wouldn't be able to adjust for time zones.

It may be accurate for living viewing, but I think what aebrown intended to say is that it may not correspond to when the event will be shown locally. Some events, like the Women's Conference has a rebroadcast. In the Pacific Daylight Timezone, that gives the stakes a choice between 5PM and 7PM. A Stake on EDT may decide that 8:00 - 9:30 PM for the first session is a little late for an event that includes the YW and choose to show it Sunday night at a better time. On the other end of the country, that's 2/4PM HST. I'd imagine the stakes there may find attendance rather low unless they shift it to the evening hours. It only gets worse as you move away from the Mountain Time Zone.

A church-wide calendar isn't able to take that into consideration.

Sadly, this may be the one case where the community lead the developers astray. We asked for a church-wide calendar, and when we got it, we found it of questionable use.

russellhltn wrote:It may be accurate for live viewing, but I think what aebrown intended to say is that it may not correspond to when the event will be shown locally.

Correct.

russellhltn wrote:Sadly, this may be the one case where the community lead the developers astray. We asked for a church-wide calendar, and when we got it, we found it of questionable use.

Back when this was first discussed, multiple community members suggested that if there were a church-wide calendar, it would need to support local overrides for time and location and description. If that had been done, it would be a great feature. But without those features, it's not very helpful, because it contains inaccurate or incomplete information.

Back to the original post, I do agree that if we're going to have this feature, flawed as it may be, it would certainly be helpful if the new year's events were added at least a month (preferably two months) ahead of time.

The Priesthood department is working on getting the 2015 church-wide events on the calendar. We tend to be slow doing this each year.

As a suggestion, if we could get the satellite schedule entered in (which includes Conferences, and Devotionals), that would go a long way to make people happy. That comes out at the end of August.

There's always going to be new things added, like the Lindsey Stirling event last month. But usually those things have limited impact on local events. The heavy-hitters are all in the satellite schedule.

The draft list I have includes the CES devotionals for young adults, CES broadcasts for teachers, general conference (an Women's meeting), and the Christmas devotional.