I think it’s a universal problem of finding a time that works when a group of people is trying to get together. It reminds me of Brooks’s Law (“adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”) that for every incremental person you try to schedule with, it becomes increasingly difficult to find a time that works.
With a busy-ish schedule and not in front of my calendars, I’m reluctant to agree to a time to meet knowing that I might have to cancel it later. That’s why having a free service like Doodle available is so convenient.
Somebody creates a Doodle poll to ask all the participants what time works for them. Instead of doing a mass email with a nightmare reply-all scenario going on, everybody just responds to the poll. Once everybody has chimed in, the creator closes the poll and settles the time that works for everybody.
I have had encounters with people where they spend more time trying to find a time that works for everybody than the future meeting would take.
Bonus features with Doodle include being free, simple, and not even having to register. You schedule an event with a title, description, address, and your name. Then, you choose dates to give people options. Finally, you choose time slots for those dates. Then you just send it off to your peers.
Instead of wasting time speculating, “I think Thursday works for me”, you can just say “I’ll Doodle everybody and we can decide when we’re meeting next.” It doesn’t get much easier than that.