DEFER MEETING 1.0

P.K. Shaw aptly states, “A meeting consists of a group of people who have little to say – until after the meeting.” This sentiment reflects a common frustration in the professional landscape. Traditional meetings often consume valuable time without yielding productive outcomes.

“Stretch Meetings” offer a progressive alternative to the conventional meeting format. These cloud-based sessions aim to enhance productivity while minimizing inefficiencies commonly associated with internal meetings and conference calls.

• Research indicates that the average American professional participates in more than 60 meetings each month (Source: Meetings in America: A study of trends, costs and attitudes toward business travel, teleconferencing, and their impact on productivity, Greenwich, CT: INFOCOMM, 1998).
• Furthermore, it has been found that approximately 50% of meeting time is unproductive (Source: ibid).
• Alarmingly, 39% of attendees reportedly doze off during meetings (Source: CBS News).

Defer Stretch Meetings address these issues through several innovative features:

• Flexible scheduling allows meeting times to be set for days, weeks, or even months ahead, ensuring that all participants can attend.
• Attendees have the option to join and leave meetings as their schedules permit, eliminating the need for mandatory one-hour sessions.
• Participants can invest just five minutes for meaningful contributions rather than committing to an hour for minimal input.
• This format encourages active participation from a broader range of individuals, fostering a collaborative environment rather than allowing one speaker to dominate.
• The design facilitates communication across language barriers by accommodating varying speaking paces for multilingual audiences.
• Stretch Meetings allow for seamless coordination across time zones, eliminating the burden of attending early morning or late night sessions.
• Value is added by integrating updates on new content into brief daily sessions rather than overwhelming attendees with back-to-back meetings.
• All data from the meetings—including questions, answers, shared documents, and attendee lists—are preserved for future reference, contrasting with traditional note-taking practices that often capture only a fraction of discussion points.
• Every relevant piece of information is centralized in one location, reducing the time spent searching through various platforms and notes.
• The platform offers real-time feedback capabilities to both hosts and attendees during meetings, moving away from passive observation towards active engagement.