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Emailing a text-based meeting scheduler

Submitted by Merlin on November 29, 2005 - 6:23am.

ButtUgly: Main_blogentry_231105_1 [The Iteration List]

A very clever and satisfyingly lo-fi way to find the best date for an event based on several people’s schedules. By passing around emails with an ASCII, monotype text representation of the possible dates and times, each person uses a symbol to indicate their preference and availability. Very clever stuff.


       December
       0                 1                   2                   3
       1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
       t f S S m t w t f S S m t w t f S S m t w t f S S m t w t f 
Janne  + + - - + + + + + ? ? + + + + - - - ? ? - - - - - - - - - + 
Ville  + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + -
Kalle  - - - - + + + + e e e - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
Sanna  - - e e - - - + ? ? ? + + + + + - - + + - - - - - - + + + +
                     * *           *

From this table, it’s easy to see what would be suitable dates for everyone (marked with “*”). The initiator of the sequence suggets Thursday 8th, and everyone agrees. And while they were at it, they agreed on holding the 15th as “tentative”, so that they get to continue the game if it’s not finished in time. One of the advantages of this calendar is of course that you can immediately see who might not make it - and while everyone is equal, missing someone might not be.

[ Thanks, Brian ]

in

I has a boring train...

Submitted by Simon (not verified) on November 29, 2005 - 11:18pm.

I has a boring train trip, and I wanted one of these of my own.

Command line python script here: http://caelyx.net/howto/code/scheduler.py

To use just download it, dump it somewhere (in your $PATH) is good, make it executable (“chmod a+x scheduler.py”), and run it from the terminal. Running it without arguments gives you the next 21 days. You can also specify the number of days as the first argument, and your name as the second. So, if your name is Merlin, and you want to give a 14 day calendar, run it as:

./scheduler.py 14 Merlin

Bug reports and suggestions welcome: projects _ at _ caelyx.net