The calendar I use for OFN is my personal calendar (I have 2 other work calendars as well), and I don’t really want to share all the things that are in there with everyone (as much as I like you all some things are private 
). Which would mean I would have to set up a separate OFN calendar and I really, really don’t want to have to manage another separate one on top of the ones I have.
PROS OF USING A SHARED CALENDAR APPROACH:
- No need to remember to update something (if you put holiday dates in your calendar already)
CONS OF USING A SHARED CALENDAR APPROACH:
- Some of us don’t use a calendar in that way, so we would have to either start putting holiday notifications in our calendars or set up a separate OFN calendar to share (one more thing to look after). And if we set that up we need to remember to keep it up to date because it won’t be the calendar that we use now for everything.
I spoke more about this with the AU team (@sstead, @oeoeaio, @serenity, unfortunately @maikel wasn’t online to join in at the time and @kirsten was at her day job), and Serenity also suggested the slack channel status.
I already use this with my other slack teams to let people know when I’m available each week, or when I’m going to be away. You can see here that I had set up a status saying that I’d be away for particular dates coming up.
And it’s really simple to set your status (@sstead used the 
when she was away):
PROS OF USING A SLACK STATUS APPROACH:
- We’re already all on Slack, so none of us have to set up something new.
- Some of us are using this status to let people know when we’re not around.
CONS OF USING SLACK STATUS APPROACH:
- Those who aren’t using it have to figure out how to do it, and we all have to get in the habit of keeping it up to date.
So, for the AU team we’d be really happy to use Slack, and we’ve agreed that we as a team will trial doing this so that we can see if it works. Given that we’re usually the ones you are trying to get in touch with ( #bottleneck #annoyingtimezone ) this should give everyone a good view of who is around or why we aren’t responding. And if our status says we’re around, but you’re not getting a response, then you can blame instead on a) we didn’t see your message; 2) it’s on our list to get back to you but there’s many other tasks higher up on the list; or iii) we’re ignoring you ( 
).
@oeoeaio and @sstead and @maikel and @kirsten and @serenity and @Jen and @RohanM it would be ever so great if you could update your Slack statuses to reflect whether you are working (and which days you’re usually available), or if you’re away / planning to be away soon.
Allora, finalmente è il fine settimana!
May you all have a wonderful Friday, wherever you are. I’ll be kicking off my birthday celebrations (because all birthdays should be celebrated for at least a week!) in a beautiful cottage in Healesville surrounded by vineyards and very fine wine. Ciao!
I’ll do it next time.