Page 1 of 1

Best Calendar person?

Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2011 11:34 pm
by jamesehamman
I am wondering who most Stakes use to update their calender. Currently we use a member of the high Council. The new calendar appears to require more of a "tech" person. Do most stakes call an individual just to handle the calender? Do you combine that with the building scheduler?

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 12:27 am
by aebrown
jamesehamman wrote:I am wondering who most Stakes use to update their calender. Currently we use a member of the high Council. The new calendar appears to require more of a "tech" person. Do most stakes call an individual just to handle the calender? Do you combine that with the building scheduler?
There are multiple possible approaches. But here are some thoughts:
  • The new calendar allows for multiple calendars, each with one or more editors. So you can push this responsibility down to multiple editors. That seems to work well in wards, but I don't know how often that is done in stakes.
  • In our stake, I maintain the stake calendars. I am an assistant stake clerk, and my participation in stake presidency meetings is very helpful for this assignment. I would think it would be very difficult for a high councilor to fill this role, since he is not directly in the loop on so many calendaring issues that arise.
  • I don't see much point in calling someone else to fill this role; I would spend more time communicating the changes to such a person that it take me to make the updates myself.
  • We have found it helpful to have a building scheduler who is independent from event scheduling. With the new calendar, the building scheduler's role is largely one of conflict resolution. Someone who is not directly involved in event scheduling is in a better position to broker resolutions to conflicts.
Different stakes will have different cultures, personalities, and specific needs. The new calendar system is flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of options.

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 1:42 am
by jdlessley
I find it interesting that the question is about a stake calendar when there really can be, and most likely will be, many stake calendars. There is a culture change from the way the classic calendar was maintained to the way the new calendar can be maintained. As Alan said there is potential for each stake orgainization to create and maintain their own calendar. It seems logical that the stake clerk or any of the assistant clerks who participate in the myriad of meetings could maintain any calendars not specific to any other stake organization, such as general stake calendars or presidency calendars. The new culture allows any stake leaders who feel comfortable with technology to contribute to maintaining calendars as they desire. Leaving the management of stake calendars to one individual is not necessary. In fact getting other leaders directly involved as editors may result in better calendar management without the additional requirement to communicate event specifics to one manager. This relieves them to add or edit events as they need or have to time to magnify their callings without waiting on the availability of "the" calendar" person or that persons schedule to read e-mail or answer telephone calls.

I think the setup of calendars is the initial challenge. This would include what calendars to create and who should be the editors. When talking of stake leaders it would seem logical to include as editors anyone who might have an input to the calendar to be added. They can always be removed at any time if needed. It really depends on the personalities of the people involved. This same approach may not work in a ward.