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I created this tool to test this question by making it super easy to use gen AI to prepare a good agenda directly through an extension on the side of your calen

I created this tool to test this question by making it super easy to use gen AI to prepare a good agenda directly through an extension on the side of your calendar. I noticed that I was in a ton of pointless meetings. Some were recorded, but I’d never go back and look at the recordings because the meetings were a waste of my time. I realized the common theme was none of these meetings were prepared well or at all. One could look at meetings as a start-to-end process. AI transcripts and summaries are downstream of meetings. The problem is, if you have a bad meeting, you get bad AI transcripts and summaries - garbage in, garbage out. Why not apply AI at the start of the meeting process where meetings are first created? Make people think of what they want to get out of the meeting, what they want to discuss, and who actually needs to be there. In theory, this should result in people having: > Fewer, shorter, and more efficient meetings > High quality agendas with worthwhile talking points > Healthy discussions that lead to an actual outcome Therefore, the AI preparation tool should: > Know what you want to get out of the meeting - i.e. what’s the objective? > Use AI to create an agenda with relevant talking points to hit said objective > Make you think of who should talk about each talking point and invite only those people > Bonus points if it follows a repeatable structure and does all of this very quickly, which should totally be possible with AI What do you all think? Less AI transcription/summarization and more AI meeting prep?

ollysb 3y ago
It makes sense in principle. I wonder if the incentives work though, usually the people that suffer from the bad prep aren't the same people that are responsible for prepping the meeting. It could perhaps work though if people were free to decline meetings which hadn't been prepped, that way if you wanted people to attend you'd have to do the legwork to make it worth their time.
- ashfernandez 3y ago
  My theory is that if you enable all the attendees to give them feedback, they could start changing. I like the idea of declining a meeting if it's not prepared OR 'nudging' them to prepare ahead of time.
vidarh 3y ago
I love meeting recordings because they become an excuse that makes it easier to get out of pointless meetings... (so yes, I'd love anything that gatekeeps the creation of meetings in a way that ensures the meetings I get added to are actually worthwhile instead of having to work around it).
- ashfernandez 3y ago
  Quick question - do you watch the meetings you record?
  - vidarh 3y ago
    No, that's the point. And I don't record them - but when people record a meeting it makes it easy to pretend you'll watch them and so not show up unless it actually matters to you. I don't think I've ever watched a recording of a meeting.
pvg 3y ago
If this is something you made and are looking for feedback, you can edit the title to put Show HN: at the beginning of the title which tells everyone they can discuss the thing being shown with the person who made it in the thread. It also makes it clear it's something people can try.
- ashfernandez 3y ago
  Ah ok, will do that next time. Good suggestion!
hartator 3y ago
> Why not apply AI at the start of the meeting process where meetings are first created? Make people think of what they want to get out of the meeting, what they want to discuss, and who actually needs to be there. You mean something that now fits in an email?
j4yav 3y ago
Nice, I worked on something similar during COVID but it was more about preparing and tracking needed discussions well enough that you don't have to have the meeting in the first place (company failed, open source code is at https://github.com/async-go/asyncgo https://github.com/async-go/asyncgo). We found that, at least at that time, companies fell into two camps - they were already doing async well and writing things down and didn't need us, or they were just desperately waiting for COVID lockdowns to end so they could get people back into meeting rooms - they don't see it as a problem, had never seen it work any other way, and so we couldn't solve it for them. If I can share anything or just talk through my experiences let me know. I think reducing time spent in nonsense meetings actually does make the world a better place for the humans in it, at least a little bit.
- ashfernandez 3y ago
  Hey -- this is great. We should connect. Would love to pick your brain and understand what you learned. I tried accessing your website, but seems to be down(?). Let me know how we can chat - my email address is ashish.fernandez@meetrics.ai

ollysb 3y ago

It makes sense in principle. I wonder if the incentives work though, usually the people that suffer from the bad prep aren't the same people that are responsible for prepping the meeting. It could perhaps work though if people were free to decline meetings which hadn't been prepped, that way if you wanted people to attend you'd have to do the legwork to make it worth their time.

ashfernandez 3y ago
My theory is that if you enable all the attendees to give them feedback, they could start changing. I like the idea of declining a meeting if it's not prepared OR 'nudging' them to prepare ahead of time.

vidarh 3y ago

I love meeting recordings because they become an excuse that makes it easier to get out of pointless meetings... (so yes, I'd love anything that gatekeeps the creation of meetings in a way that ensures the meetings I get added to are actually worthwhile instead of having to work around it).

ashfernandez 3y ago
Quick question - do you watch the meetings you record?
- vidarh 3y ago
  No, that's the point. And I don't record them - but when people record a meeting it makes it easy to pretend you'll watch them and so not show up unless it actually matters to you. I don't think I've ever watched a recording of a meeting.

pvg 3y ago

If this is something you made and are looking for feedback, you can edit the title to put Show HN: at the beginning of the title which tells everyone they can discuss the thing being shown with the person who made it in the thread. It also makes it clear it's something people can try.

ashfernandez 3y ago
Ah ok, will do that next time. Good suggestion!

hartator 3y ago

> Why not apply AI at the start of the meeting process where meetings are first created? Make people think of what they want to get out of the meeting, what they want to discuss, and who actually needs to be there. You mean something that now fits in an email?

j4yav 3y ago

Nice, I worked on something similar during COVID but it was more about preparing and tracking needed discussions well enough that you don't have to have the meeting in the first place (company failed, open source code is at https://github.com/async-go/asyncgo https://github.com/async-go/asyncgo). We found that, at least at that time, companies fell into two camps - they were already doing async well and writing things down and didn't need us, or they were just desperately waiting for COVID lockdowns to end so they could get people back into meeting rooms - they don't see it as a problem, had never seen it work any other way, and so we couldn't solve it for them. If I can share anything or just talk through my experiences let me know. I think reducing time spent in nonsense meetings actually does make the world a better place for the humans in it, at least a little bit.

ashfernandez 3y ago
Hey -- this is great. We should connect. Would love to pick your brain and understand what you learned. I tried accessing your website, but seems to be down(?). Let me know how we can chat - my email address is ashish.fernandez@meetrics.ai