Calendars and Household Knowledge Management

Kicking off this week's theme of household knowledge management is calendars. It is hard to keep track of who is doing what with a busy family.

My work calendar runs on The Firm's Exchange / Outlook platform. Since it is runs on The Firm's computer, I have a very limited ability to add on toolbars or functionality. So synchronizing my work calendar with an external calendar does not seem possible. I have not found an add-on that I can install or that can get through the firewall. The Wife has similar problems with her work calendar.

The Wife and I could just copy each other for all of the events. But then our calendars would be mucked up with events that one of us is going to but not the other.

We decided to use Google's Calendar application. It allows us to have separate calendars for me, The Wife, The Son and The Daughter. We even set up a separate calendar for family and friend birthdays. The Google Calendar allows us to use a different color for each person so we can easily distinguish whose event is whose.

When an event intrudes into the work day, we invite the work address to the event. Google Calendar plays nice with the Exchange/Outlook platform so the invitations from Google Calendar appear as calendar events at work and vice-versa.

Since the Google Calendar is web-based, I can use it at work and view the calendars on my blackberry.

Using Google Calendar has been a great way for the family to share calendars and put the information in context. It is a household knowledge management success story.