Google calendar sharing issues

Last night I was asking Grace about an interview she was going to do with Bloomberg today. She was surprised that I knew about the interview because she didn’t think she mentioned it to me. I told her that she put it in her calendar, so that’s where I saw it. Then she was even more surprised because she didn’t know I could see her Google calendar.

I told her that while I was in the US last week suddenly all her calendar items popped up in my Google calendar. I assumed she was finally convinced of the fact that the more you share the better it is for you, and that she took it to the next level by sharing her calendar publicly. A year ago she was still complaining to me about me sharing my whole life on my blog, on Twitter and Facebook, but now she probably posts more on Weibo (Chinese Twitter) than I do on all social media sites combined. So this could have been a logical step. Or maybe she just wanted me to know when she needed the car and driver without having to tell me. Whatever the reason I found it quite practical.

Because around the same time my colleague Joop Dorresteijin also started to share his Google calendar I thought that Google may have given people an incentive to share calendars. I checked with Joop today and it turned out that it was a coincidence, he had not planned on sharing his personal calendar but only the work related UnitedStyles items. The settings in Google calendar are not very clear and now also some of his private appointments appeared in my timeline.

For Grace it turned out to be a mistake as well. She set up a new MacBook Air and I assume she must have unknowingly changed some settings while importing her old calendar items. She was obviously not too happy that I had access to her calendar without her knowing this, so she changed the settings right away. Well, at least my calendar is not so clogged up anymore. And I will check my own settings to find out with whom I am sharing my calendar!