Ask people what they think of meetings — especially virtual ones — and they’ll tell you that most meetings they attend are a waste of time. Why are they a waste of time? Some reasons meetings go bad include:
- The right people aren’t there to get things done;
- The agenda is unclear or particpants don’t stick to it;
- The conference call solution being used lacks visuals.
Meeting solutions company TimeBridge is trying to make meetings better. We’ve reviewed TimeBridge before when it launched as a scheduling application, and I wrote about TimeBridge when video conferencing was added. This week, the company announced their unveiling as a full suite of tools to “run great meetings.” Read the rest of this entry »
We all know how painful it is to coordinate a meeting involving more than a couple of people. Everyone has to check their calendar of events to find a date and time that will work for everyone’s schedule. The more people involved with the meeting, the more difficult it all becomes. If the meeting involves ordering food for everyone, then the plot only thickens. Here are some free tools and services that can help tremendously with coordinating and even conducting meetings, as well as getting everyone fed.
First, Lock ‘Em In
Tungle makes scheduling a convenient time and place so much easier by sharing your available times to anyone via the web. Microsoft Outlook users within the same organization don’t need it, but it comes in handy for those outside of the corporate firewall. Tungle’s interface is great, and there’s also a Tungle.me widget that you can embed on your web site to give people quick access to your calendar and events.
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For those of us who earn our living working online, the always-connected lifestyle can have its benefits and its drawbacks. I spend most of my day at my computer, whether I am in my office or working from other locations. When I step away from the laptop, I rely heavily on my phone as a way to check email, Twitter and RSS feeds, and I use it to look up information or get a map to the location for my next meeting. However, it isn’t always clear when using these devices violates the social rules defining acceptable behavior. In the New York Times, Alex Williams shares his views on the topic of smartphone usage and manners, so I thought that I would try to outline my take on appropriate use of devices in various social situations.
Photo by scriptingnews
Conferences and events: For most events, using a laptop or phone falls within the boundaries of acceptable behavior. We use our devices to take notes, blog or tweet about the event, and keep up with our email and other work during these events. Possible exceptions to this rule could be where the event is small and intimate, or where most of the attendees are not computer-savvy and so someone typing on a laptop might seem out of place. Read the rest of this entry »
I am in a constant state of “meeting avoidance mode,” especially for those meeting requests that don’t directly relate to revenue generation. However, I just finished an interesting IM conversation with a friend of mine. It went something like this:
Him: “What are you doing on Friday afternoon? We want to bounce some ideas off of you before you go to Beer and Blog at 4pm.”
Me: “Sure, let’s meet for lunch”
After we disconnected from IM, I noticed that I never even bothered to ask him what he wanted to talk about, and I realized that this is a recurring pattern with this person. He has introduced me to so many great people and projects over the years that I’ve stopped asking what and why and started skipping right to when.
Maybe this is how some people handle requests for meetings, but it’s not my usual strategy. I get many requests for meetings, ranging from people wanting to discuss my consulting services, to people wanting to pick my brain about some online community topic, to those who want to talk to me about one of my many side projects. I get more requests than I can reasonably handle, as I have a chronic calendar problem of having too many events, meetups and meetings with random people, while not having enough time for paying client work. As a result, I normally try to avoid extra meetings, and I have a few meeting avoidance techniques that I use. Read the rest of this entry »
As web workers, we probably have to endure meetings less often than our cube-dwelling counterparts. When you do hold a meeting with a client or with your teammates, either face-to-face or as a teleconference, you want to make it as effective as possible so you get the outcomes that you want, without wasting anyone’s time.
Here are some tips for making sure that your meetings are less of a chore, go smoothly and have outcomes that are favorable for everyone. Read the rest of this entry »
In general, I am meetings-averse. Most of the time I find them of questionable value, with attendee lists that defy logical explanation, and a frequency which is almost never merited. They are also frustratingly difficult to schedule at a time that suits all of the attendees. Accordingly, anything that makes the business of meetings easier, and less of a hassle to organize, is a useful tool in my book. When is Good, a new, simple scheduling web app designed to take some of the calendar-fumbling out of planning a meeting, definitely fits that description. Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
