I’m a closet techie nerd—I like technology almost as much as I like chocolate—so Popular Science really does it for me. In a recent issue, Pop Sci (it’s hip to be square) shared “5 things you can do to make meetings more efficient.” Some of the tips are aimed at corporate employees so all of you corporate employees who are working naked, this one’s for you. But fellow entrepreneurs, pay attention…we can use some of these tricks too.
- Hold them online. The Web-conference software dimdim runs into your browser. It lets you present PowerPoint slides, share your desktop and shine a laser pointer on a virtual whiteboard. It also has voice and video capabilities.
- Find a time. Turn planning a meeting over to diarised. Give the application a list of names and meeting times that work for you. It e-mails attendees and comes up with the best time for a meeting based on responses from everyone, then it follows up with a confirmed date.
- Say you’re late. Use Oops I’m Late cell phone software to compare your clock, calendar, your phone’s GPS coordinates and the meeting place to figure out if you’re going to be there on time. If you’re going to be late, the site sends everyone who is attending the meeting an automated apology along with your new ETA.
- Keep them short. Meeting Miser adds up the salaries of attendees to convert each minute into a dollar figure. That tends to keep meetings from dragging on too long.
- Bail out. When you want to escape a meeting early, plan ahead and use getmooh (as in “get me out of here”) to get you out of the meeting. Before the meeting starts, figure out what time you want to leave and the service will send you what appears to be an important phone call.
