Googling our Ward Council

Not too many months ago, I was the Ward Executive Secretary. My responsibilities were heavily weighted to organizing the agendas for the various Sunday meetings that the bishop had with other leaders of the ward in different configurations. I thought I was doing a pretty good job by getting agenda items from the various leaders, keying this all into a Word document, and making sufficient copies for the actual meetings.

But our current Ward Executive Secretary has gone one further and used two features of Google that I have never seen used: Google Docs and Google calendar.

Google Docs simply provides a place for all authorized people to deposit/delete/change a collaboratively created document. In this case it is the meeting agenda. So each of the attendees has some say in the agenda. The bishop has the final say by reviewing and publishing the final agenda. But neither the bishop nor the executive secretary has to re-input something that is already in the system.

Google Calendar works very much like the Microsoft Office as far as inviting participants, getting RSVP's or rescheduling requests. In fact the program is a not just a little intimidating.

I for one will be interested to see if our newly sustained bishop can keep up the use of technology.