<p>I am scheduling my Book Group’s meetings for the new year (Sept- June) We rotate homes each month. I need each member to pick a date they’d like to host.Does anyone use any kind of program or app to do this ? I’d like to send the dates to the group and have everyone sign up for a date without all of the responses going back to me leaving me to sort out the calendar. FWIW- we are reading The Paris Wife and A Movable Feast for September.
Thanks!</p>
<p>Have you tried a shared Google calendar? I haven’t used one but DD and S3 have used them at work. [Share</a> your calendar with specific users - Google Calendar Help](<a href=“http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=37082]Share”>Share your calendar with someone - Google Calendar Help)</p>
<p>I just use Google Docs for this sort of thing–you can create a schedule in Word or Excel, upload it to Google Docs, then grant access to everyone via the provided link. As each person enters their name for a particular date, the new entry is saved, and everyone accessing the document will see the updated version. I’m pretty lame at leaning new techie stuff, but this was dead easy for me–the Google Docs site holds your hand pretty well.</p>
<p>That being said, our book club keeps things simple by just retaining the same rotation year after year–I know I’ll always have my turn after Susie Q and before Hermione. We have 12 members and meet 10 times a year, so each member’s turn ends up in different months as the years go by. If anyone has a problem with an assigned date, they work out a trade with another member and notify the rest.</p>
<p>And FWIW also, we are reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for September.</p>
<p>How many people could be in a book discussion group? What if you spent the same amount of time you spend trying to figure out your scheduling and picked up the phone and spoke like a normal person? Think of all the time you’d save.</p>
<p>Or just tell everybody to bring their calendar to the September meeting and hash it out there – it will only take a few minutes.</p>
<p>Google docs sounds like it would be great. I’ve used [url=<a href=“WhenIsGood : No Such Event”>http://whenisgood.net/]WhenIsGood[/url</a>] to schedule meetings and it’s very user-friendly, but it’s better for the kind of meeting when you have to get everybody (or the most people) in one place at one time.</p>
<p>Parent1986- there are 15 of us- way too many people to track down. </p>
<p>We’ve been together for a dozen years. I’m finally trying to modernize the calendar.
I’ll give Google Docs a try. Thanks for your suggestions.</p>