If you were to ask an employee of any company for a list of their biggest gripes, there’s a good chance “Meetings” would be near the top of the list. There are plenty of reasons why people don’t like meetings, but there’s usually one overarching theme: they’re inefficient. From longwinded tangents to ill-prepared presenters, many meetings could probably be held in a fraction of the time if everyone just got their act together. Cue MeetingMix, a new site launching today that hopes to help streamline meetings, helping you ensure that everyone involved is more prepared, time conscious, and on topic.
MeetingMix’s core functionality is to help you create and distribute an agenda for your meeting. First, you name a meeting and add a few bullet points outlining which topics you’d like to cover. Then you send your meeting outline to your coworkers, inviting them to tack on any topics they think need to be covered. The logic behind this is simple: everyone knows ahead of time what you’re going to talk about, so there’s less of a chance of off-topic tangents. You can also assign each meeting point to an employee, so everyone should know going in what they’re going to be responsible for.
MeetingMix also has a set of features you can use during and after the meeting. During the meeting, you can use a tool that helps you transcribe notes about each item on the agenda, which are later compiled into the meeting’s minutes and can be sent to all the attendees. You can project an agenda page in front of everyone, so your co-workers know exactly what topic you’re currently supposed to be talking about. This mode also includes a timer at the top of the screen that helps you keep track of how long you’ve spent on a given topic so that you don’t run over time.
MeetingMix charges meeting creators $4.95 a month, which allows you to make as many meetings as you’d like, each of which can have an unlimited number of attendees. Co-founder Shawn Gupta likens the model to 37Signals’ products, explaining that it’s a straightforward tool that anyone in a company can start using without any involvement from management or IT. To help build the product, he says that company consulted former SalesForce VP Todd McKinnon (who has played a part in plenty of meetings) and now serves as a MeetingMix advisor.
MeetingMix is intuitive and should be easy to pick up for just about anyone. But as with many services that offer simplicity as a core feature, I wonder if the product might be a little too basic. Given that the service revolves around collaboration, it would be nice if there was a way to collaboratively build a PowerPoint presentation to be shown during the meeting. I’d also like to see an easy way to make an audio recording of a meeting that’s synced up with the meeting minutes as you typed them.
MeetingMix was built by the founders behind IDidWork, a service for helping employees track their productivity. The Y Combinator-funded company is maintaining IDidWork, but they’ve switched to working full time on MeetingMix.