Browbeating people to meet is never fun. Assuming you can reach everyone, you then have to undertake the impossible task of polling everybody to find a time and place.
To make things easier, try Doodle, a free service that helps you schedule events and vote on the logistics.
Say a disparate group of college friends wants to meet up on alumni weekend. With Doodle, all you have to do to schedule a mini-reunion is pick the times and dates and add the relevant email addresses.
Doodle then sends an email to everyone in the group, who vote on times that work for them. The service then tallies the votes and notifies all of you when it determines the most convenient time.
Want to have your friends vote on the meeting place as well? Click on “Create a poll” and fill in every locale where you might want to gather. Your friends will vote and Doodle will send you the ranked results.
For $28 a year, you can upgrade to Premium Doodle, which includes an ad-free environment, a tracking tool and the ability to send personal messages with your invites.
It’s the next best thing to being a complete and utter hermit.