A reminder to all of you who use google calendar to track your work events: Please keep it updated, especially for the next month and a half.
1. For days you are taking off (holiday, vacation, or other), please create an all-day event indicating that. Be sure to edit it to "busy", because all-day events default to "available", meaning they are invisible when someone is considering scheduling you into a meeting.
1b. For extra protection, you can also create yourself a meeting that spans your entire workday. That makes it even more obvious that you will be out, so makes it less likely that someone will accidentally schedule you into something. This extra step is totally optional. (I don't do it myself.)
2. Please RSVP accurately to meetings, with either a yes or no (or maybe). It's always very helpful to know who is planning to attend, but it's even more important in this season of taking time off, because some meetings can/should be canceled or rescheduled if enough people will miss them.
3. Don't forget to indicate your unavailability while traveling as well, by blocking off entire days (remember to mark them "busy"), or specific chunks of time. You can set those "private" to avoid exposing your specific travel plans publicly.
Thanks, and happy winter to all!
Kevin Smith Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation