No More Excuses: Importing Your Events into Personal Calendars

Guest post by Ellen Dietrick

The New Year is quickly approaching and with that comes the deluge of new calendars.  Synagogue calendars, school calendars, board meeting schedules, and soccer schedules.  Like me, you are probably used to dedicating an afternoon around this time of year to entering all of these lists of dates into your personal calendar.

Those days are over.

Set up a calendar for your organization in Google, post it to your website or blog, invite your members.  One click and voila, each event on your organization’s calendar is instantly imported into their personal calendar.  The events show up in a new color, so your organization’s events are easily distinguished from other entries on the user’s personal calendar.  And the best part- as you add events to your organization’s calendar, they automatically show up on each individual’s personal Google calendar.  You can even use it to send invitations to your events and collect RSVPs.  It is all both cost free and ad free.  For those that don’t use Google calendar, they can easily view events right on your website or print the calendar in any of three formats:  weekly, monthly, or agenda.

To get started on setting up the calendar for your organization, you’ll need a Google account.  Then go to Google calendar and select “Add” in the “My Calendars” section.  The investment of time is quite minimal.  Spend a few minutes entering the events and then embed the calendar directly to your website.  To try it out from a member prospective,  visit a sample calendar at Kesher Jewish Community After School Program. Then just hit the + at the bottom of the calendar.  (You can easily remove it later.)  Note that for Mac users, Google allows you to add a link to allow them to get the calendar through iCal too.

Ellen Dietrick is the new Director of Early Childhood Education at Temple Beth Shalom in Needham, MA, and is famous for her creative and practical uses of technology at her previous position at Congregation Beth Israel, in Charlottesville, VA, and through the Covenant Fellows program and the Jim Joeseph Foundation Fellowship.