Regular meetings vs. ad hoc meetings vs. offline meetings

What are the differences and when should you use each type?

Historically, boards and committees used to conduct in-person meetings at regular intervals (E.g., the monthly meeting in the board room). When technology became more available, people started joining meetings remotely through conference calls and recently, video conferencing is replacing in-person meetings almost entirely in many organizations.

With many companies specialized in video conferencing and online communications, MyCommittee, on the other hand, is focused on supporting the meeting cycle, improving the content and outcomes of meetings and providing tools that organizations can use to ensure people’s time spent on meetings is used most efficiently.

The general availability of the Internet virtually anywhere people go, together with the popularity of small and mobile devices, opens even more doors for communication and collaboration, whether is it synchronous with people discussing issues real-time in a meeting or asynchronous using messaging and chat applications.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the different types of meetings supported by MyCommittee and when to use each type.

Regular meetings

As the name implies, regular meetings are the traditional monthly or weekly meetings that are still the norm for most boards and committees. MyCommittee’s popular Agenda and Minutes Wizards provide full support and automation for these recurring meetings.

With the monthly meeting planner, automated meeting notifications, agenda templates and automatic membership management, these wizards do most of the boring work while keeping track of old business, action items and agenda items requested by members. In between meetings, members use MyCommittee to collaborate, share and track progress.

A board package feature makes document management easy for members and online voting can be part of a regular meeting as discussed in a previous post.
Meeting agendas and minutes are stored and indexed indefinitely, and a downloadable PDF version of agenda and minutes is generated automatically for future reference.

Ad hoc meetings

When you need a meeting with participants other than your entire board or committee, ad hoc meetings in MyCommittee provides an easy way to quickly create a meeting agenda and invite the participants you need. They don’t need to be members of your group or even MyCommittee users.

The Agenda Wizard will create the meeting and agenda and send the notifications. After or during the meeting, the Minutes Wizard can be used to quickly complete the meeting minutes and an automatically created PDF version can be distributed to all participants.

There are many benefits of using ad hoc meetings. All registered MyCommittee users can create their own ad hoc meetings using the simplified Agenda and Minutes Wizards. Ad hoc meetings provide a built-in ‘availability poll’ so it’s easy to agree on a meeting date with your participants.

The meeting remains personal and visible only to registered participants.

Offline meetings

An offline meeting is the most recent meeting type supported by MyCommittee. Contrary to a regular meeting where all members are present (in-person or remotely) at the same time, nobody needs to be present for an offline meeting.

An offline meeting with MyCommittee looks a little like a regular meeting with a meeting agenda and all members participating but the discussions happen offline by messaging. Offline meetings are open for participation as long as the meeting is active. Start and end time can be scheduled, and notifications are sent automatically to all members.

Members can read and post comments whenever they have time. The moderator (or meeting organizer) keeps an eye on the discussions and can make a summary (minutes) at the end. As with regular meetings, a voting component can be added to an agenda item and decisions can be made without ever having to meet.

Voting is secure and transparent and the voting results are automatically calculated at the end of the meeting. Offline meeting agendas and minutes are stored forever and indexed. PDF versions of the agenda and minutes are created automatically for future reference.

Summary

Regular meetings are still, by far, the most used type by boards and committees and remain the main focus and the heart of MyCommittee. Other meeting types can have a place in the organization as well and can be very effective at certain times.

Adhoc meetings can be useful when you need to work on a task or project with only a few members of your group or need to meet with an external party to discuss committee related topics.

Offline meetings are always with the entire committee can be used for a variety of things like brainstorming, researching complex topics, preparing for the next in-person meeting, and so on. The possibilities are endless. For more advanced groups, offline meetings could, sooner or later, replace many of the in-person meetings saving plenty of time for everyone.

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“MyCommittee is focused on supporting the meeting cycle and improving the content and outcomes of your meetings”

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We hope this post was useful and answered some of your questions regarding the type of meetings supported by MyCommittee. We recommend to try all types and find out what works best for your organization.