Meeter Puts More Power in the Meeting

By Steve Anderson
Contributing TMCnet Writer

It's not hard to see where meetings have taken a bad rap these days. A line of commercials featuring oblivious manager Bill Lumbergh—who goes so far as to call in his staff on Labor Day for a “catch-up” meeting—underscore a fairly common opinion about the meeting. But there's still quite a bit of value in getting everyone together and on the same page, and Meeter's new release proves just how powerful a meeting can really be.

Meeter brings together a set of tools designed to turn the meeting from the kind of boring time-waste that might be seen in a Dilbert strip and instead making it a part of the operation to be taken seriously. Meeter offers automated scheduling tools, standardized agenda tools, and archiving mechanisms to allow the contents of said meeting to be referred back to later. Meeter is what's known as a “Smart Meeting” tool, which can not only establish meetings based on the best time for all participants—it can analyze information to find just when that right time is—and can also learn behaviors and change its presentation based on the various participants' preferences. Essentially, Meeter allows for a complete “Meeting Lifecycle,” offering impact not just in the meeting, but before and after as well.

Meeter can schedule meetings for as many as 100 people at once, and versions of Meeter can be had on both Android (News - Alert) and iOS, making it available for a large portion of the mobile environment. Since it's also Web-based, it can be made available to most anyone. It shares neither data nor details of meetings, so it's a very secure platform as there's nothing to steal in the first place. It also offers unique landing pages for meetings to more readily share information, visibility of upcoming meetings, and even more insight on just who's being met with most often and how frequently it's being done.

Some here might say that, with a mobile workforce steadily on the rise, the need for such tools might be, well, past its prime. But others, meanwhile, would suggest instead that a mobile workforce makes meetings more important. Not necessarily in the Bill Lumbergh sense that more are necessary or that these should last longer, but rather in that meetings are necessary and must be done right. Tools like Meeter help keep the meetings focused and running smoothly. All the meeting's content is kept handy and can easily be referred to later, which is great when dealing with people who may be several time zones behind—or ahead of—the meeting time in question.

Essentially, the meeting is still valuable, even if the old way of conducting a meeting isn't. The changes in the overall landscape prevent many of the old ways from being worthwhile; it's like trying to use a buggy whip on a Ford (News - Alert) Explorer. The Bill Lumberghs of the world are on the way out, replaced by powerful new tools like Meeter. We all still need that occasional contact to keep all the oars pulling in the same direction, so to speak, but there are so many more ways to do that now than just getting everyone together in one room.