Google Docs 2.0 in Meetings

We've all used Google Docs in weekly meetings.

It usually goes like this: At the beginning of the meeting, we find the Google Doc, open it, review the notes from our last meeting, ask an update from people on their actions (coming out of that last meeting), then write new notes on top of the old notes - with more or less structure to it.

Some of us even take extra time & effort by manually adding an agenda, sharing pre-reading materials, creating an action table, cleaning up the notes and more.

Taking a step back, It's easy to understand Google Docs popularity as a 'meeting workspace':

• It's a tool almost anyone knows.
• It's easy to use.
• It's a cloud-based, collaborative document.
• It has flexible formatting.
• It's easily shared with others.
• It's stored in Google Drive (available in any G-suite organisations).
  

Nonetheless, Google Docs was never built for meetings - for example, it doesn't:

• Pull automatically meeting information (date, location, guest list, agenda).
• Keep track of how much time we have left, for the meeting to not run over.
• Differentiate notes, decisions, actions, next steps - it's just plain text.
• Assign 'actions' to people AND make sure they get done.
• Highlight outstanding actions from past meetings.
• Organise documents by meeting, through your calendar.
  

And unless you're the most effective team in the world, this usually translates into:

• Not always being prepared when going into the next session.
• Having some actions previously discussed still not done.
• Sometimes being unclear on who's doing what.
• Losing track of time and run over.

We didn't want to wait for Google Docs 2.0 (if it's a thing) to address the above - so we built Meetric instead.

Meetric is like Google Docs + Google Tasks but built for meetings. It's easy to use, cloud-based, collaborative, has flexible format and is shared easily. On top of that, it organises meeting notes by event, for all the events in your calendar.

Since launching Meetric, we've seen teams switching from Google Docs to Meetric overnight. Their meetings now go like this:

At the beginning of the meeting, Meetric automatically loads with the meeting details - agenda, participants, location (based on the event details in Google Calendar).

A countdown timer also appears, to show how much time is left in the meeting (based on the event time in Google Calendar).  

Meetric highlights the outstanding actions from the last meeting, their owners and due dates (like a live accountability tracker!). We can expand any past meetings to see all the actions decided then (done or not) and general notes.

As the meeting runs, we write down new notes (real-time collaboration like Google Docs) and create new actions with clear owners (which they can later mark as 'done' in Meetric).

At the end of the meeting, the host shares the notes & actions to complete, by email or Slack in just 2-clicks - and Meetric gives him a congratz message if the countdown timer didn't get to 0, meaning the meeting finished earlier than expected!

Later on and before the next meeting, participants...

• with actions under their name will get reminded automatically (to do them), so everything discussed gets done in time!
• can use Meetric to write down what they want to discuss in the next meeting, so they don't forget about it.  

Teams using Meetric over Google Docs have reduced unnecessary admins, got better accountability from one meeting to the next and saved time!

If you're a founder, leader or manager, try Meetric in your next meeting with your team - or book a 10min call with me to learn more.