Since Tom -last month’s intern- has returned to Oxford to continue his education, It has fallen to me to ensure that the remainder of his work on scheduling reaches you, gentle R*M reader. Without further a-do (and with no credit to myself for what is to follow) ladies and gentlemen; I give you Mr Tom Ward…
Is there any advantage to sharing your schedule with the world? The answer is an emphatic “yes”. Putting your schedule online allows your friends and colleagues to bypass one of the most oft spoken phrases in the English language, and in doing so save time. The phrase “What are you doing…” is made redundant, as the person asking the question will already know. This allows decisions to be made quickly, without time being expended by the process of contact. It also allows the individual to introduce a strong element of regularity into their life, by clearly demarcating periods when they wish to receive phone calls emails etc, and periods when they do not. In addition, making a schedule available digitally increases a new type of functionality. Social media users can post comments on other user’s schedules, warning them of potential clashes, and requesting for time to be made available. At base level the use of scheduling in social media can increase efficiency.
You can schedule in a social media way already. Facebook’s events feature allows users to plan and share events, and publicise those events to their friends via the public feed. An independently created “Schedule” application lets users plan out their schedule in the familiar calendar format, complete with colour co-ordination. Google Calendars can be compared, and meetings requested via email. Even twitter’s encouragement for the user to broadcast their present activity can be seen as a sort of social media scheduling, albeit one constrained to the present. Unfortunately there is presently no de facto scheduling tool incorporating all of the features listed above. Nevertheless, its presence can only be around the corner.
There are good reasons for us to schedule, and the capability exists in some form already. The next question we should consider is how online scheduling could be made to work from a brand perspective.
