Last updated Nov 2, 2023
Buckeye is a gathering for collective reinvigoration of place-based lifeways. The annual gathering is a family-oriented, all-ages event that emphasizes skills and materials indigenous to California, while welcoming talents from all over the map as well. While the gathering itself is an off-grid experience, the organizers use Teamup prior to the event for class scheduling.
We are a little different then your average Teamup clients. We only need to use the calendar for about three months every year. March, April and May. We organize a 700 person event that is a week-long conference with over 100 classes.
Teamup as a group scheduling tool
To keep the scheduling experience as seamless as possible, the organizing team uses Teamup as a collaborative calendar. They share secure calendar access with individuals who are teaching and contributing. Then each person can add their own classes and offerings to the calendar with all the needed information.
Be
fore sharing the calendar, the core team sets it up with sub-calendars for each category of instruction. There’s also a custom field to designate the appropriate age group for each class.
This setup is simple but effective as a group scheduling tool: a large group of people can collaborate for the gathering and plan the classes and events with minimum schedule conflict.
The number of ‘organizers’ that will be using the calendar over the next few months is well over 80 individuals… They all need access to all of the categories and each add their individual classes, which are often in several categories. An added benefit for us in using Teamup is that they can all see who else is scheduling in each category for each day and time, and try to schedule their classes in a way that there is minimal duplication or conflict. This is all done over the few months before the event.
Once the schedule is mostly set, they can share the calendar with all attendees:
A few weeks before the event (when the majority of the classes have hopefully been entered) we plan on sending out a “read only” link to the participants so they can preview the schedule before arriving onsite. We then print out the entire calendar for use during our event as it takes place in an off-grid location.
This concept can be used for many types of events and gatherings where a collaborative calendar would be helpful. Whether it’s a conference, a tradeshow, group activities, a retreat, a festival, or a community gathering, try Teamup as a group scheduling tool to make organization streamlined:
- Provide secure calendar access via user account or shareable calendar link.
- Set up color-coded calendars to represent categories, tracks, event types, locations, etc.
- Use custom fields to track other dimensions for easy filtering.
- Explore with one of our live demo calendars to see the possibilities.
Many thanks to the Buckeye team for sharing your story!
