Today's meetings are no longer confined to conference rooms. Video conferencing technology allows people to participate in meetings no matter where they are. It also means we have to be more aware of the reasons we're asking for a meeting in the first place.
People already complain that they have too many meetings on their calendar. When individuals are spread out all over the place, it could be said there's an advantage to in-person meetings. It makes the meeting organizer pause and ask, "Is this worth bringing everyone together?" After all, there's a cost to the meeting.
With video conferencing technology, meeting organizers have to be careful. It's still important to ask the question "Is this worthy of a meeting?" Just because no one has to travel to attend, doesn't mean a person's time isn't valuable.
As we've discussed earlier in this book, there are three reasons to conduct a meeting:
To convey information, as in the case of regularly scheduled status...