Google Calendars Are Here!

During the last three months the BBPC Communication Commission has been experimenting with Google Calendars as a means of helping church groups publish their activities for members (and potentially the world) to see.

Google's personal calendar facility (creatively titled "Google Calendars") has offered a very attractive option... You can create a calendar for any person or organization and share it with the world -- no fees or ads required. In fact, if you have your own personal Google calendar you can add the events from any other Google Calendar to your own.

As an example, I have a Google Calendar that I've set up to synchronize with my Office Outlook (which you can understand I don't want to publish to the world). I've added to my calendar the events that are on some of my family's calendars -- my daughters Laura and Leslie who live far away (again, private and only shared with family); my other daughter, Linda, and my wife Delia. I also watch the published calendars from my childrens' universities, and of course the published New York Yankees Google Calendar. All of these individual calendars can be turned on and off in a moment, as I please.

SO NOW... If I want to see what's happening in the BBPC Youth Group, or at BBPC Sunday School, I can simple locate and turn those calendars on as well!!!

Do I need to be a Google Calendars subscriber... nope. You can view any of the BBPC Calendars as basic Web pages. You'll still be able to see the detail on each event. BUT, if you DO subscribe to Google Calendars (free) you'll be able to integrate all of the calendars from all of our organizations that publish them, along with your personal or family activities. And, of course, you get to choose the levels of privacy that's appropriate for your own calendar.

So if your BBPC group is ready to tell members and friends 'what's happening and when' then ask a Communication Commission member about setting you up with a Google Calendar, or for a demonstration of how other groups have done the same.

Of course you can look at the current BBPC Google Calendars by visiting the BBPC Calendars page on our Web site (http://www.bbpc.org/calendars.htm).