One of our Tunglers recently brought us a question – once you’re hooked on Tungle, how do you get the people around you hooked? In particular, what if those people are using archaic paper calendars, and are loathe to leave their dead-tree “solution” behind?
Excellent question.
For starters, they’re on paper calendars. Chances are, they know e-calendars exist, yet they’ve chose to stay on paper. We can’t fault them for that. After all, e-calendars without Tungle are not very exciting, and are rather inflexible.
Rather than push them towards an e-calendar first (to which they would most likely respond, “Why would I switch to a keyboard and mouse when I can do the exact same thing with a pen and paper?”), they need to see what Tungle can do for them, and then they’re more likely to move to an e-calendar.
Another key point to keep in mind is that as long as you have an email address, you can use Tungle. In fact, if you're an invitee, you don't even have to sign up to reply to invites. Which means you don't need an e-calendar to use Tungle. But if you do, and you sync it with Tungle, it'll keep you from getting double booked, allow you to share with others, and a whole lot more.
So here are a few tips for showing paper calendar users the value of Tungle:
The Tungle video
You know that video on our homepage of Sarah and John scheduling up a frenzy? That one. Even paper calendar users love it, and immediately see the power of Tungle after watching it.
Show them
Send them a meeting invitation through Tungle. Then get up and walk to their desk (old world style) and open the email for them. Show them how easy it is to just pick a time and book the meeting.
Give them a highlighter
Yep. A regular, plastic, bright yellow highlighter marker. Tell them to look at their paper calendar and highlight all their free times. Then have them photocopy the page and send it to someone they want to meet with.
“But no!” They’ll say, “What will I do if I have to book another meeting while waiting for a reply? I’ll get double booked!” To which you reply, “That’s why you need Tungle. Tungle can automatically update a meeting invitation sent by email, but not a paper one.”
Improve their vocabulary
Booking meetings is a lot less mundane when you can say things like, “Tungle me!”, “I just Tungled my Outlook”, “Your calendar looks all Tungle-y”, “I just got Tunglified”, “Bob totally just Tungled you” and “I’ll Tungle my team.” You can’t do that on a paper calendar (“I’ll pencil you into my Dilbert agenda” = not as fun as “Send me a Tungle!”)
If all that fails, just send them here and see if they bite ;-)
