LessMeeting Presents "You make the Call"

"Recently we debated the most useful handheld device for driving meeting effectiveness and efficiency using LessMeeting. It was a split decision with half the team voting iPad and the other half voting iPhone.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both and our team spent a great deal of time laying LessMeeting use cases for both devises. On one hand the iPad would offer the same functionality and features LessMeeting users enjoy today, but at the moment there is a limited (but growing) number of iPads being used in business environments. On the other hand the iPhone users are everywhere from the boardroom to the mailroom, however, applying LessMeeting to this device would mean a decrease in features and functions. There are certainly many more pros and cons for both side of this discussion, but that’s where you come in.


In the spirit of democracy (and the best IBM ad-campaign ever) we open the floor to anyone who would like to cast a vote. Please let us know which device you feel LessMeeting is best suited for and why.

image source: wikipedia.net

Templates and Notifications

Keep giving us more great ideas, and we'll keep building them! We just pushed an exciting upgrade to the Outlook plugin, with 4 notable new features:

1. Agenda Templates
2. Tag Suggestions
3. Upcoming Meeting Notifications
4. Improved Plugin Layout

New Layout for the LessMeeting Outlook Plugin

Agenda Templates

Ever wish you could just reuse the template for that Sales Meeting you keep having over and over again? Or not sure what a good status meeting should have in it? This is our first step towards solving that problem. The first iteration has a list of common templates. Fear not... in the coming versions, you'll be able to maintain your own templates, and even share them with your teams.

Tag Suggestions

You told us that teams were awesome, but they revealed that we were all using different tags! Now tags are automatically suggested based on the attendees you add to your meeting and other tags you use. The Agenda Templates will also filter by the tags you use.

Upcoming Meeting Notifications

Love LessMeeting, but forget occasionally to open up the web space to take notes? This feature is for you. We've hooked into Meeting Notifications to pop-up a reminder with your agenda and a link to go to your meeting space.

You don't need to do anything special to upgrade. Let us know what you want next!

Meeting Etiquette - Technology in Meetings

Clickity, click, click, click…. Scroll wheel…. Click click…. This is the sound from the guy next to you frantically tapping away on his blackberry in the middle of the meeting.

Is he checking his Facebook page, is he playing solitaire, or is he responding to an email that is critical to helping your company meet its Q3 sales figures?

Having constant connectivity with technology (Laptops, iPads, and Smart phones) in meetings can be a powerful tool when you need to lookup KPIs on the spot, share a web based product demo, or do a group review of an important document. But, these same technologies can also act as a distraction to your meeting participant.

When is it ok to have technology in meetings?

Before we dive into the topic, think about the following three question in relation to your organization:

1. Are there ground rules for the appropriate usage of technology in meetings at your organization?
2. If people at your company were more technologically disconnected, would they be more attentive in the meetings in which they are participating?
3. Would your meetings be more effective and shorter if everyone were fully engaged for the duration of the meeting?

A simple rule of thumb for when it's OK to use technology in meetings:

"If what you are doing is more important than the meeting topic, then it should be ok to work on that task or send that email during the meeting"

BUT… evaluating the logic of this rule: "should you even be in the meeting if you have a more critical task that needs your full undivided attention?"

The following are a few guiding principles that we recommend if you are participating in a meeting:

• Turn off all sound (including vibration).
• Don't take phone calls in the room. If you have to take a call, get up and leave the meeting, then take the call in a hallway.
• If you have to use your technology in a meeting, let the meeting organizer know upfront.
• Never, ever, ever play games or surf facebook in a meeting.
• If you do take notes on your computer (a legitimate reason to have a laptop in meetings), share them with the meeting organizer after the meeting.
• If you have a more important task to do and you aren't critical to the meeting, don't go.

If you are organizing the meeting:

• Set ground rules before the meeting starts.
• Assign a note taker, and let everyone else know. A sneaky trick is to assign note taker to whoever has their laptop open when the meeting starts. Do this a few times, and people will stop having their notebooks open during a meeting.
• Let people know that you respect their time and would like to keep the meeting as short as possible, let them know that their attention is important to the value of the meeting.

Let us know your ideas and suggestions for how to manage appropriate technology use in meetings.

The “Deer in the Headlights” Response

I’ll admit it… I’m a serial multi-tasker, particularly in meetings, and especially in those that are conducted over conference call. Since I’m in a confessional mood, I’ll go one step further: I usually do a half-hearted job of each of the tasks on which I’m multiply focused. There are countless times where I’m “multi-tasking” during a meeting and I hear these dreaded words: “Jason, how does that sound to you?” Nine times out of ten I’ll wing it with “Sounds great!” just to avoid giving away my dirty secret. It takes a frantic IM to a fellow team member to figure out what I just agreed to. I see the same behavior in my colleagues; I know I’m not alone.
Since becoming a regular LessMeeting user, I take notes more frequently than I used to, which has in turn upped the amount of attention I pay in meetings. Even when I’m not taking notes, one of my co-workers often is. If I do happen to drift away, I can refer to the live notes to get the context of the discussion. As a result, I’m much more knowledgeable about what’s going on in my projects, and I’m not committing myself or my team without knowing what I’m doing.
LessMeeting has saved me from myself enough times that I am now a firm believer in the better meeting practices that it embodies. What tools or techniques do you use to save you from yourself and improve your productivity?

Meeting Mascots

As a consultant, I work with many different clients. Each client and even teams within a client have distinct personalities. The anthropologist in me loves observing and then adopting the culture of the teams with whom I work.
In one recent project, several weeks in, I was in a meeting where the discussion had started to drift off-agenda. One of the managers grabbed an Elmo doll and held it up, saying “Ok, I’ve got Elmo.” Everyone immediately stopped and a renewed focus swept the room, getting people back to topics relevant to the agenda.
As it turns out, that Elmo doll is the team’s Parking Lot mascot. All team members know that if they’re talking, and someone holds up Elmo, they need to shelve their discussion for a different time to allow the team to get back to the original purpose of the meeting. Elmo allowed the team to have a common vocabulary and a tool that gave everyone a role in ensuring that they followed good meeting practices.

What about you? Would your team’s meetings be more effective if you had a mascot that was a little tongue-in-cheek but that all team members felt empowered to use?

image source: wikipedia.com

It's a Team Sport

We've heard from a lot of you that you wanted to combine the power of LessMeeting with a little bit of team management. After all, there's not much to gain from being a one man all-star team.

Welcome to the first iteration of the LessMeeting Team Dashboard!

As your team members join, you will be able to track:

• Daily Cost!
• Popular topics
• Upcoming meetings
• Recent todos
• How well people are taking notes and creating agendas

Teams are "opt-in", so you'll send invitations to your team members through the team setup page. If they're not already registered, they'll be sent a link to do so:

What's next?
Our next Team Dashboard release will include the ability to create teams filtered down to certain "Tags". i.e., This means you could create a team with John, Martha and Richard with all their meetings about the "CENTRA Project".

Thoughts?
What else would you like to see on a Team Dashboard?