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Business gurus yap constantly about "upping your productivity" to which I say "up ...," well, you get the idea. But my particular hot button for productivity wasting activity, the bad meeting, kills efficiency and morale. Whether it's a conference call or a physical sit down and fight-for-the-last-donut meeting, wasting time insults everyone involved. That's why I'm interested to see if the newly updated TimeBridge can make good on it's promise to transition from a meeting coordination service to helping "busy professionals run great meetings."
Most of us are still fighting the problem of coordinating meetings via the e-mail train wreck, as I discussed in The Law of Meeting Coordination and Get More Work Done With Less E-mail. Shared calendars, from vendors like Google, HyperOffice and StreetSmart address the calendar coordination issue pretty well. TimeBridge does the same thing, and it claims 400,000 users benefit from the service, which takes a more active role in herding attendees.
TimeBridge cleverly uses peer pressure to force those last few reluctant attendees to commit to a meeting time. When using the service, you create a meeting page, add the names and contact info for attendees, and list several alternative times (invitees need not register on TimeBridge to participate). Each attendee clicks a link in the e-mail meeting invitation and picks all the suggested times they're available for your meeting.
Peer pressure comes in because everyone invited...