Calendaring like it's 2009
So here we are in the year 2009 and calendaring is still challenging even for advanced computer users. With devices like the iPhone that have many times the computing power of early personal computers, how is it that scheduling can still be such a nightmare? It's certainly not the fault of hardware.
When was the last time you had to arrange an important meeting or event at work? I bet it took umpteen emails, copying everyone involved. and unless you're operating on a closed corporate Outlook system and don't span many timezones or need completely accurate free/busy information, it's likely that the invitations you sent out didn't even make it onto everyone's digital calendar properly unless some invitees were diligent enough to input it manually. It's hard to even imagine how much time and energy is wasted on this within our professional lives but I am sure the amount is mind-blowing. Sadly, the corporate environment is actually easier than our personal lives - ever tried to setup an event electronically when the people you want to attend use PCs, Macs, iPhones, Android phones, Blackberry devices or some social network calendar? Good luck with that!
While the title of this blog post is a somewhat lame word play on the lyrics of the song "1999" by the artist formerly known as Prince, calendaring like its 2009 is anything but a party. It's almost enough to make those of us in the field of software development hang our heads in shame. Rather than throwing the towel and simply accepting that like death and taxes, poor calendar integration is simply a fact of life, I have instead joined neutralspace. We are here to SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. While we may be small, Google and Microsoft were also once small and we are seriously scrappy with both the brains and determination needed to tackle this challenge.
Want to get involved? Tell us your calendar horror stories. We are already building dotCal, a standards based solution to the embarrassing state of calendar affairs. As part of the CalConnect Consortium we are at the forefront of establishing standards that will allow seamless integration of calendar data across the plethora of disparate systems that exist today. It's a large problem and we're solving it one step at a time so help us help you schedule things better by telling us YOUR calendar nightmares so we can be sure that your specific use case makes it onto our Fix-It List.
