I’m not a fan of meetings. I know they’re essential, but they often become big time-wasters for everyone involved.
I am, however, a big fan of apps that do one thing really well, and especially apps that do that and can scale up or down in the process.
Less Meeting has helped me deal with meetings more effectively and efficiently — and it scales in a way that allows people to slowly adopt it without feeling overwhelmed.
The service acts as a one-stop shop for all of your meeting needs. You can schedule meetings through Less Meeting (although I generally use Doodle for that) and share meeting minutes both on the fly and after meetings. Tagging is supported — which is great for those of us who use them in other apps like Evernote (as well as the new Mac operating system Mavericks — and want uniformity.
Whether you want to assign actions to attendees, mark decisions made, or simply list key points, Less Meeting gives you that option. You can set an genda to cover certain topics over a period of time — and if your meeting runs long or a segment does, the time progress bar will indicate that. Essentially, Less Meeting does an excellent job of doing much more than just setting up a meeting destination. It helps you execute those meetings in an effective and efficient manner.
Now not everyone I’ve had (or will have) meetings with will want to use Less Meeting — I’m well aware of that. Many folks like to use another app for that, like Evernote, Google Drive, or even just a local document. There is a learning curve, but like any other app or service that’s worth using it’s got a decent benefit that goes along with curve. Less Meeting is designed for meetings – as well as actions surrounding those meetings – so it’s definitely a “one thing well” sort of service. And it does its one thing very well.
If you’re looking at a way to streamline your meetings – if only for yourself – then give Less Meeting a good look. I’m only starting to scratch the surface of what it can do…and I’m liking what I’m seeing so far.1
1 For a bit of a deeper dive, my friends Craig Jarrow (Time Management Ninja) and Steve Dotto (DottoTech) offer more comprehensive pieces on Less Meeting.
