Our meditation centre runs retreats that can be a single day or a longer residential stay—often ten or twelve days.

They are silent retreats. People still need to know what is happening and when, without announcements breaking the quiet.

The problem with paper on the wall

For a long time the schedule was printed and stuck up around the venue.

That works until something changes.

Weather shifts a walking session. A teacher runs a few minutes over. Lunch moves. Suddenly the paper is wrong, and reprinting or scribbling on posters is awkward in the middle of a retreat.

A simple idea

Keep the full schedule in one place that admins already know how to edit.

Let every screen in the building read from that same place, and refresh when the data changes—so previous, current, and next items stay honest, and people can always see what is coming.

Step 1: the schedule lives in a Google Sheet

Admins enter dates, times, labels, and activities in a straightforward table. If the plan changes, they update the sheet. No redeploy, no chasing PDFs.

Retreat schedule rows in Google Sheets: date, label, time, end time, and activity

Step 2: what everyone sees on the screen

The display is meant for TVs and projectors: large type, calm background, and a clear “flow” through the day.

Before a slot starts, the UI can show a countdown. During the retreat it keeps previous, current, and next in view, with an obvious now state so the room always knows where they are in the programme.

Event schedule display: clock, date, programme name, and three schedule rows with the current item highlighted

Step 3: the same view in the actual hall

Multiple devices can open the same app. They all point at one sheet, so the projector at the front and a screen in another room stay aligned.

The schedule display projected in the meditation hall during a retreat

What we used

  • Vite and React for a lightweight client that stays open all day
  • Tailwind CSS for layout and readable, large-screen styling
  • Google Sheets API to load the schedule and pick up changes when the sheet is edited

It is a small, practical build: less paper, fewer mismatches between “what we printed” and “what we are actually doing,” and a calmer way for yogis to orient themselves in silence.

This was another community-focused piece for the centre—not a product pitch, just something that made the retreats a little easier to run.