Reservations worth it?

[Gary_Miller]

Independent of reservations I'd really like to see the groups put all their activities in as events so I know what they're doing when and where!

Craig not just you, but the entire ward or at least those in the ward who have subscribed to those calendars, such as parents.

[Gary_Miller]

Amen. The real power of the new system I like is the ability to sync the church calendar to one's personal calendar - like a smart phone. Not as something to look at like in LDS Tools, but right in your own calendar.

But that only works if 1) The event is entered and 2) the calenders are broken out so that you can subscribe to what you need to know and ignore the other events.

A big Amen with a halalua.

[TinMan]

That would all depend on how your calendars are set up. In my ward, for YM/YW organizations, we have a calendar for, YM/YW combined activities, YM Activities, YW Activites, Deacon Quorum, Teacher Quorum, Priest Quorum, Beehives Class, Miamaids Class, and Laurels Class.

Question: Is there a danger of having too many calendars? As a parent, I find it confusing.

[russellhltn]

Question: Is there a danger of having too many calendars? As a parent, I find it confusing.

I'd think it depends on the naming. In my mind, if there are only two events a year or less, then there's no need for a separate calendar. But much above that, then there is probably a call for a calendar for that category.

Perhaps the parents confusion is the idea that they only need to subscribe to one calendar that best fits their category when in fact they need to subscribe to all that apply.

[aebrown]

I'd think it depends on the naming. In my mind, if there are only two events a year or less, then there's no need for a separate calendar. But much above that, then there is probably a call for a calendar for that category.

There's clearly a need to strike a balance, but I would draw the line in quite a different place than two events per year. I'd say you need well over a dozen events in a category to justify a separate calendar. If we used a threshold of 2 events, our stake would end up with 30 or more calendars, whereas we now only have 7 public calendars.

I understand that different people will take different approaches, but here is some of the thinking behind our stake's approach. First, why you should keep the number of calendars low:

• Every calendar you create has a cost. It takes up room on the list of calendars, increasing how much scrolling you have to do.
• Every calendar needs a unique name, and since not all names are completely obvious, a long list is harder for people to sift through. A good naming scheme certainly helps, but can't be perfect.
• Since an event can only be on one calendar, having many calendars increases the number of calendars a person has to subscribe to (a parent of a deacon might have to subscribe to "Deacons" "Deacon/Beehive Combined" "YM Combined" "YM/YW Combined", and that's just for the deacon -- if they also are parents of a Laurel and a Mia Maid and a Cub Scout, the number of calendars explodes rapidly)
• For every calendar you have to decide who should be the editors, so a long list of calendars adds some administrative burden.
• Having many calendars weakens the benefit of color coding, since you can only clearly distinguish at a glance 10-15 colors.

On the flip side, the benefits of more calendars are:

• By selectively subscribing to more targeted calendars, members will have fewer events they're not interested in (e.g., if there is a single Youth Activities calendar, a deacon will be seeing all the Laurel activities, when the only Laurel activities he cares about are those that are for combined YM/YW).
• Administration is simplified in some ways, since the Teachers Quorum adviser and president might be the only editors needed for a Teachers Quorum calendar, but if you have a single Youth Activities calendar, there are many leaders who might have needs to edit that calendar.

Clearly we are concerned about those latter arguments (otherwise we'd have only one calendar), but we give a lot more weight to the former arguments.

[jdlessley]

I just talked to our bishop about reservations vs events. He pointed out that he prefers just putting the reservation into the system to prevent another unit from scheduling any part of the building and not burdening the youth organization leaders, YM, YW, 11-yr-old Scouts, Cub Scouts, and Primary for activities day with scheduling events to ensure room availability. He also does not want to restrict which rooms an organization has access to. He believes the organization leaders within the ward can work out rooms needed without the need to tie them to set ones each mutual night. So for him, he prefers a reservation to the burdensome creation and management of events.

[TinMan]

Why is creating a single "Mutual Night Event" for the whole location more burdensome than creating "Mutual Night Reservation" for the whole location?

[jdlessley]

Why is creating a single "Mutual Night Event" for the whole location more burdensome than creating "Mutual Night Reservation" for the whole location?

When an event needs to be created it will conflict with the single "Mutual Night Event" and the single event can only be on one calendar. We do not have a single calendar for all five of the organizations that use the building on mutual night. The only calendar we have that might work is the Ward Activities calendar. The bishop does not want events that do not apply to the entire ward to be put on that one calendar. He also only wants members of the ward council to have edit rights to that calendar.

[Gary_Miller]

I just talked to our bishop about reservations vs events. He pointed out that he prefers just putting the reservation into the system to prevent another unit from scheduling any part of the building and not burdening the youth organization leaders, YM, YW, 11-yr-old Scouts, Cub Scouts, and Primary for activities day with scheduling events to ensure room availability. He also does not want to restrict which rooms an organization has access to. He believes the organization leaders within the ward can work out rooms needed without the need to tie them to set ones each mutual night. So for him, he prefers a reservation to the burdensome creation and management of events.

Without an event attached to the reservation it will not show up on any Calendar.

[russellhltn]

Without an event attached to the reservation it will not show up on any Calendar.

Indeed. How many of the youth have smart devices? Wouldn't the youth leaders like to have their events show up on them?

For several months I had to take care of some family things and it kept me away from my normal ward on the weekends. I ended up scrounging the trashcans later to find out what was coming up. If any of the youth end up with Sunday jobs, they're likely to get cut off information-wise which makes it that much easier to go inactive. Having a calendar that syncs to their device will help them stay informed and allow them to come to the events they can still fit into their schedule.

While I respect some of the bishop's concerns, I think he's moved way over to the oversimplified side of a good balance.