The Orange Chair

Steward Mader of Wikipatterns.com asks, Do you spend too much time in meetings and answering email? He shares his story:

It’s equally amazing that with a wiki, I can work with my mates in Australia, colleagues in Europe, and collaborators in the US - all without trading tons of emails and spending hours in meetings. Instead, I email only when necessary (say, to let someone know the address of a wiki space or page I’ve set up for a project). When we do have a meeting, it’s short and focused on discussing something that truly needs to be discussed in person, rather than a long series of updates that people can just as well get by watching the wiki pages where we’re collaborating.

We have a team wiki which we use for organizing the opportunities we’re exploring and keeping track of the things we’ve accomplished. The wiki is very helpful for our weekly update meetings. Before the meeting, we update the list to reflect what we’ve done and what we plan to do. This makes it easy for our manager to keep up with our progress and ensures that all the important points get covered during a short meeting. There are more ways to use a wiki to reduce e-mail and maximize the value of meeting time, and I’m looking forward to trying them out with my team.

How about you? Do you spend too much time in meetings and answering e-mail?