Make Your Meetings More Productive with Meetzi

Meetings are a waste of time. OK, maybe not all meetings. But we’ve all sat idly by in a pointless meeting that wastes our time and drags on and on in different directions. Various attempts have been made in recent years to fix meetings: from Open Space Technology to stand-up meetings. Entire books have been written on the subject. Meetzi is a simple SaaS meeting manager and timer designed to make meetings quicker and more productive.

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The steps to create a Meetzi meeting are deceptively simple:

• Select a date and time for a meeting
• Set a goal for the meeting (“You’d be amazed at how many meetings don’t have a goal,” Meetzi CEO Brad Garland said)
• Invite people (only the organizer has to have a Meetzi account)
• Set agenda items – each item has a time limit
• Optional: put in a host per hour
• Start the meeting, this starts a timer for each agenda item
• Participants can assign “actionables,” add notes or attach documents to the meeting
• When the meeting is finished, click finish
• Meeting participants will be asked to rate the meeting and will be able to give anonymous feedback on how productive they thought the meeting was

The benefit is that it forces whoever is holding the meeting to really think the meeting through, from the goals to the agenda to the amount of time each thing should take. The obvious downside is that anyone feeling lazy could just as easily schedule a meeting through a company’s normal calendaring system instead. Nonetheless, it seems like an excellent tool and a great way to add structure and forethought to meetings.

The cost feature is interesting. Garland says he once met a salesperson who figured out her company was spending $10,000 a week on a large sales meeting. Sometimes a meeting is just a cost of doing business, but being able to put a price on a meeting could be a handy thing.

Meetzi won the Launch Pad competition at Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara earlier this month.

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