Uses for wiki, part X+1 of Y: arranging meetings

Ever played email tag with a group of people while you’re trying to arrange a meeting? Ever fixed a date and time only to find it’s no good because the most important participant forgot to update their Outlook schedule for that day?

Play tag no more, because a wiki might be the answer. Here’s what we do.

Let’s say we’re trying to arrange a meeting between 10 people from different organisations. We’ll simply create a page on our wiki titled ‘Potential meeting dates for meeting X’ and send out an email with the link. The page has a list of everyone’s name and a list of the potential dates - so individuals can visit the page and delete the days they’re not available. Not only that, but they can see at a glance what other people are doing - so if it’s going to be one of those situations where not everyone can make every day, you’ve got a chance for the optimum combination of date and participants to emerge.

If the wiki page has an RSS webfeed, it’s trivial to subscribe to it so that you’re alerted as soon as someone has added or changed their availability - no need to have to remember to check back. And you can also use the same page to publish and agree on the agenda.

Filed under Wikis, Working smarter |