Calendar:Status Meetings:2006-04-20

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Meeting Details

• Thursday April 20, 17:00 UTC

• Telephone meeting
  • Toll-free (North America): (800) 966-1573
  • Toll-free (Germany): 0080040402020
  • Toll call (elsewhere): +1 (703) 736-7449

• Conference ID: 894594

In Attendance

dmose, mhovis, jminta, ctalbert, Mike Beltzner, Mike Connor, mvl, lilmatt, garyvdm

Since this was a phone meeting, the meeting log is incomplete. All the quotes are paraphrased statements, and some of the quotes are probably not attributed to the correct people. But, it's a fairly decent record of the conversation.
Meeting Log

Agenda

• Calendaring Goals
  • Lower the barrier to entry (ease of use, interoperability)
  • Does what the user needs to
  • Focus on making data unsticky, whether it means expanding back end support or having excellent import/export functionality
  • Drive calendar standards so that they become as ubiquitous/normal/easy to use as email

• Target (Imaginary) Users
  • Focus on what tasks the users perform, and how to solve those well
  • Focus on the top 5 things each user type will want to do with the calendar software
  • Remember that users have tasks and concerns not related to the software. They use the tool because they need a calendar, not because they like calendaring.
  • Much discussion regarding Outlook/backending exchange, corporate versus non-corporate users. No decision
  • Should not focus on being an Outlook replacement, focus on being a good product
  • Need to keep UI uncluttered, but extensible for users that are using calendar sharing functionality
  • Calendar Sharing (iTIP, iMIP, Freebusy, Publishing support etc) are major functional pieces that must be considered in context of target User Tasks
  • Timezones must be considered in terms of user tasks as well

• Overall Product Definition
  • General
    • Use the net to make time management and scheduling easier for people
    • Ease of interoperability with other calendaring systems
    • Lots of choice in terms of calendar applications, but little innovation in calendar applications
    • Drive calendar innovation and standards adoption
  • Lightning
    • Defined in combination with Thunderbird?
    • iTIP and iMIP are easier in Lightning
    • Lightning must be defined in terms of the Thunderbird UI, and there may be constraints there
  • Sunbird
    • Address book integration is going to be very difficult (system addrbooks on MAC, using default mail client)
    • iTIP and iMIP infrastructure must be able to take advantage of whatever mail client is on the system
    • Try to keep Sunbird and Lightning as close together as possible and make decisions with regard to user tasks and behavior.