Thursday, October 06, 2011
LessMeeting Helps You Lead Fewer, More Effective Meetings
LifeHacker: Regardless of whether you lead meetings or simply attend them, they can be productivity killers and time-wasters. LessMeeting is a new web service that wants to make it easier to organize meetings, build an agenda, and keep track of action items and discussion topics to send out after the meeting.
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8 comments:
This looks like a great tool and I always have an eye out for any tools that will aid in collaboration. This being said I don't think I could justify the $12/mo pricetag on it. The idea seems neat but I would really love to see a free similar product.
I looked into the other products that the article mentioned. Minutes.io looks cool and it is free but it only takes the minutes for a meeting. I like the idea behind LessMeetings where it helps you schedule a meeting and plan the agenda.
I then ran a google search to see if there were any other tools that provided functionality but sadly I couldn't find anything. I guess I will stick to google calendar at this point.
I'm always a little bit skeptical about digital note-taking programs or digital meeting schedulers, because I think that every process and every meeting may require a different approach to notes or scheduling. This article doesn't make clear if it is possible to customize or change the format or input of the program, but I imagine that there is a standard format and the meeting notes and action items are put into a template when they are sent out. While this may speed up the process, I am a firm believer in formatting that makes sense for that process or even specifically that meeting, and a template will not always be the easiest and most understandable format. Like Jackson, I don't know if I could justify the $12/month cost per user, which seems a little steep.
I could see a program like this being effective when mandated by a company, however I am not sure that in our field that it would be quite as effective. With so many departments and people, the learning curve is always steep with new technology, systems and protocol. In the more informal setting of the School of Drama, I don't really see any tool being used that costs so much and that isn't mandated. If everyone doesn't have it, is it really as useful a tool anymore?
This seems very useful. I feel like I am constantly at meetings that get going and are good but then drag on too long and so become stale and productivity goes down. Anything to speed that process up seems like a good idea to me. Lessmeeting seems a little sketchy, I feel like it is a little bit specific and long of every business and might have to be tailored to the specific need of the company that is using it. I also think a lot of the stuff this is doing, can be done by machines.
As Ariel brought up, this could be an effective program depending on the situation it is used and the structure of the organization. For businesses were meetings are mandated and a structure is more relevant this would be a great tool to speed up the distribution and organization of material. Putting a price on a meeting to help cut them down must be justifiable. Maybe if there is so much planning that has to go on or chaos this would be acceptable to pay for. The interface and interaction could also take people a while to get accustomed to and make not be appropriate in all settings. I am skeptical about digital interfaces that are laid out already, when will we decide how to run things vs always having it handed to us?
I think that meetings have their place and that they are given a bad rap is because they are not kept on topic.
This is especially true in an arts organization. The amount of times that a production meeting is confused with a design meeting or vise versa is almost as common as the meetings themselves. However, does this clear line actually exist? Is there a black and white line between something that requires all hands on deck (production meeting) or can it be dealt with by a smaller group of people at a different time (design meeting).
How exciting! I loathe meetings that waste time, especially because in the theatre community, meetings seem to pop up around the most hectic times. When an hour meeting could be condensed into 30-45 minutes, it is quite upsetting to sit and deal with the disorganization. This looks like a great tool that can help in avoiding bad meeting situations. I also believe, though, that some very valid points have been made about the possible negatives to this program. Perhaps it is a good start to finding better and more effective ways to plan meetings, and that with some more development can be used.
I can think of several groups that could use this program. In my own life, my RA could use this, my club, my family for scheduling Skype calls when we each only have a certain amount of time and certain amount of stories. I hate meetings that you have to scheudle around and everyone shuffles in, then they talk about something forever that could A) only have taken 5 minutes, and B) could have very well just been emailed out. Also, there is a difference between a casual meeting where people can chit chat an no one is really in a hurry and a mandatory meeting with an agenda. I go to so many meetings where I'm just trying to show up on time, get the information, and run to my next thing. But a lot of groups can't tell if they are being too casual and taking 10times as long to chit chat and get off topic or if they called the meeting to discuss something. There are certain meetings that can really just be an email correspondence or phone conference. I think my mom would pay for this program.
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