Hi all,
I'm tearing my hair out trying to find an approach that works for everyone in my band. There are 4 of us in the group, and 1 of the guys works shifts so we need to be able to see his availability for gigs etc., as well as everyone's holidays.
Now, the complication comes in the fact that the shift guy is not tech-savvy at all, and neither is the rhythym player.
It's taken us 2 years to get the shift worker to sign up to an iCloud calender myself and the drummer created (much to our amazement), and he can see everything in there, add dates etc. So we thought that was it - but then the rhythym player said he cannot see it as he hasn't got an Apple device.
We've tried using a word document with all dates, hosted on a Facebook group, but the shift guy could never download it.
Does anyone have any recommendations on the best ways or apps (across both Apple and Google phones) to do all this?
Thanks.
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You have to have a Google account to use it, right?
Set up is fairly straight forward once the account has been setup - just install the app and enter the access code. After that it works pretty much like any other calendar app. Ours is set up so each member has their own colour and band books has its own colour as well so we can see at a glance who is/isn't available.
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Whatever you use there is always a likelihood that someone can't use it (or claims they can't but really can't be bothered), so I just ask them to txt me when they know there is a date they aren't free and enter it. It has worked out less stress than constantly trying to "persuade" them.
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Get some reliable deps in place if you can and book in confidence. If matey boy can't commit straight away, dep gets the gig instead. He'll soon work out how an online calendar works.
Putting non-availability at least helps in some way
We also used Drive to manage files, links etc and the benefit is multiple ppl can edit at once - our song choice doc in Dropbox was a nightmare as it couldn't do this.
I've created a TeamUp calendar, looks pretty tasty - and nice that you can use the iPhone calendar to view it as well (even if you need to use the app to add dates).
I'm sure there'll be some reason as to why someone cannot use it, but I've done pretty much all I can. Cheers guys!
However, now the drummer is complaining that "It doesn't alert you when a date is added". Er, isn't the whole point of a calendar that you LOOK at a date you have in mind to see if anything is going on....?
Having a group calender which relies on everyone uploading their availability has never worked for me. There are three local venues who call me first (usually on a Thursday) when they get a cancellation for an upcoming Saturday, so for me, deps work better than dodgy outdated info from technophobic rhythm guitarists.