Eyes Above The Waves

Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Repatriate Kiwi. Hacker.

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Meeting Absenteeism

I have a bad habit of missing meetings that I should (and want to) attend. This is inexcusable given that my meeting load is actually very light.

I have identified a few contributing factors. Many of these meetings are outside normal work hours (especially early in the morning, given my timezone), so sometimes I fail to check my calendar before I go to bed and wake up after the meeting. Sometimes I want to wake up but forget to set my alarm, or set it incorrectly. Sometimes the alarm just fails to wake me up. Sometimes I know about the meeting and I'm awake and working, but I get caught up in something and don't realize that the time has arrived. I use Google Calendar and GMail, and when people send time change notification emails Google Calendar adds them as new meetings instead of replacing the existing one, which sometimes confuses me about when the meeting is. I quite often quit and restart my browser, which means my Google Calendar tab often isn't really loaded and can't produce notifications. Most of my meetings are teleconferences of some kind, and sometimes I don't plan ahead and when I try to join the meeting, I find that Vidyo isn't working or some other technical problem prevents me from joining the meeting immediately. None of these issues are excuses, since this isn't a very hard problem.

I could try setting up the FxOS calendar app, but I'm not very vigilant about keeping my phone charged so that might not help much. Maybe I should do that and also ensure that I have a desktop calendar app capable of producing audible notifications, that launches on startup. To some extent I may just have to be trained by pain and humiliation.

Until that happens, consider this blog post an apology for the meetings I've missed, and an apology in advance for the meetings I miss in the future. Also, consider this a blanket permission and indeed recommendation to contact me by whatever means necessary when I've agreed to a meeting but I'm not there --- IRC, email, cellphone, even my home phone. The numbers are in the Mozilla phonebook.

Comments

Jesse Ruderman
If you make Google Calendar an app tab rather than a normal tab, you can be pretty sure it will be loaded.
honkerdown
Like Jesse Ruderman said, pin Google Calendar as an app tab. I do that, works well.
Kevin H
If you can proxy a U.S. telephone number through to your home and cell-phones, then maybe this service would help you: http://wakerupper.com/
Anonymous
Or, if you use Thunderbird, use the addon which puts Google Calendar in a TB tab. I love that addon. Gerv