Meetin.gs – Simply Effortless Meetings

20 thoughts on “Meetin.gs – Simply Effortless Meetings”

1. Feedback sought:

   Visit https://www.meetin.gs. Spend no more than 5-10 seconds on the home page. What do you think the site is about?

   I think this is an app/software that makes meeting collaboration easier.

   Now go back to the site and comment on various elements of the site.
   

   I like the colors on homepage, but there are a lot of icons and things to look at that my eyes don’t know what to look at first. This could be a problem.

   Sign up for the service. You will receive your free private beta invitation the next day.
   

   Done.

   Once you are logged in, what do you think of the sign up process?
   

   How do I log in now if the beta doesn’t start until tomorrow?

   Check out the “getting started” guide. You can find a link on the bottom or during the sign up process. What do you think of the guide?
   

   I gave my email for sign up, but email received does not give instant access. Do not see getting started guide.

   Create your first meeting. Then upload materials, edit the agenda, add a few notes, and if possible, invite some friends to participate.What do you find bothersome? What do you like?
   How do you think the site compares to other similar sites/competitors like doodle.com and yamlabs.com?

   Compared to Doodle and Yamlabs, your website looks better and more premium.

   Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
   

   Looks like you have regularly updated content on your blog. No obvious errors or glitches found on website.
   All of the pictures and icons look high-quality.
   Your sign up process is not quick. I am not able to provide answers to all of your questions because I am not given instant access after sign-up. This would be a problem to new users who want to start using your service instantly. I personally would not want to wait 1 day for access. I would move on to the next service.

2. Dear Zack: The service has a delay in sending the invitations during the private beta. We have now enabled to send the invtations out instantly during this competition. You will receive your access in a moment. Love to hear your thoughts once you have received access.

3. After clicking beta test link –
   I scheduled a test meeting.
   Now it says to setup the meeting, schedule the meeting.  ? I thought I just did.
   Then Invite Participants. Edit the Agenda. Add material. Post Notes.
   I’m confused. These all appear to be action items, however when I hover the mouse over them, it doesn’t not give me an option to click on them to take action. It says I need to schedule a meeting, even after I have scheduled one for today at 12:00.

   So, now that I have attempted to use your service, I now have questions:
   1) How do you offer a service that is not already offered by the millions of time management software already in existence. It is much easier to just go ahead and use my Microsoft Outlook.
   2) Why would people use your service that has no brand credibility over already established brands?
   3) Do you solve a problem that is not already addressed in the market, and if so – why is that not stated on your homepage?
   4) I was thoroughly confused once inside your website. I do not believe it is easy to understand without a guide or some form of walkthrough tutorial to teach me how to use it. Why do you think this is a profitable service?

4. Test done after beta revamp (instant access to beta version)
   Feedback sought:

   Visit https://www.meetin.gs. Spend no more than 5-10 seconds on the home page. What do you think the site is about?
   First glance one may think the site sells iPods/iPads or something for them. However, a quick look around the main page reveals enough to let you know the site is a planning/meeting/coordinating site.
   Now go back to the site and comment on various elements of the site.
   Main page looks a bit cluttered with the various icons. The iPod/iPad images make the page a little heavy image wise towards the right side. Images do well showing you what network compatibility you have. At the same time, the icons are neatly defined and none of them dominate, allowing the eyes to easily drift over and register all of them. However, the iPod and iPad images seem to keep distracting me. Rest of the lay-out is nice and clean, easy to see fonts and large option buttons on the bottom.
   Sign up for the service. You will receive your free private beta invitation the next day.
   Done– because they changed the beta to almost instant invitation/sign up, received my invitation right away.
   Once you are logged in, what do you think of the sign up process?
   Used Facebook to log in. It was quick and easy. Also invited myself on another email and signed in with name, etc. Again, easy.
   Check out the “getting started” guide. You can find a link on the bottom or during the sign up process. What do you think of the guide?
   Link was easy to find. Pop-up window was small, hard to read on initial size. Zoom in option makes it larger, but doesn’t increase window size, meaning you have to navigate around the screen to see everything. This makes it hard to concentrate on reading materials. Guide was fairly straight forward, more of a “show-and-tell” letting you know where everything is and some information about what you can do. Maybe a bit of a flash tutorial or video for people less intuitive for finding their way around.
   Create your first meeting. Then upload materials, edit the agenda, add a few notes, and if possible, invite some friends to participate.
   Done. I set up a meeting for throwing rocks at things, uploaded images and files via the site (click and drag), email (both a document file and plain text email from an address). I invited myself on a different email.
   What do you find bothersome? What do you like?
   Uppers: Click and drag to load documents, etc. onto the site. Easy to add and edit. The ‘agenda’ email makes it easy to add stuff and receive updates. Easy to invite. Easy for invited person to join. Page layout easy to navigate, clean. The layout for the meetings and information is nice. In receiving an alert email, it is easy click on the email links to open the page.
   Downers: Sea of blue gets tiring. Maybe option to customize your page would be welcome. Feedback tag on left side annoying and distracting. Home button a bit ‘shy’ (not overly noticeable when you first start looking for it). Despite signing in with my Facebook account, no alerts/reminders/info is showing up on facebook. Alert Email font a bit small. Site a little slow on loading pages at times.

   How do you think the site compares to other similar sites/competitors like doodle.com and yamlabs.com?
   I have not used doodle or yamlabs.
   Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
   Site is neat, fast, easy to use. Though no connectivity seems to be present with facebook or other network sites, this may be a bit of a bonus as it keeps information ‘with the group’ (really, who wants a post on facebook telling the world that you have a meeting?). No glitches or problems. Though I cannot compare the site to other planning/scheduling sites, personally I like Meetin.gs and look forward to see how it evolves. I may even use it with my ESL teaching.

5. Zack, excellent questions. I will answer them in separate messages:

   1) How do you offer a service that is not already offered by the millions of time management software already in existence. It is much easier to just go ahead and use my Microsoft Outlook.

   Time management and scheduling is eady inside organizations with solutions such as Outlook. Also sharing material is easy if the organization has an online collaboration space. We all know email is not a very good collaboration tool if files are involed.

   But when you move outside an organization to have meetings between people from different organizations, people will have different calendaring solutions that are not compatible with each other. Therefore email exchange is needed to find a suitable time. This is a waste of time. This a problem we want to solve, but so do Doodle and others.

   However, once you have the meeting setup you need to share files, create meeting minutes & notes, use ipads and other portable devices, communicate next actions with the back office, have an online conferencing room etc.

   Time management software doesn’t solve the collaboration problem over oranizational boundaries. You either need to go back to email or setup a separate online collaboration space for everyone, usually involving passwords, complicated manuals and hard to remember URLs.

   We firmly believe email has 100% user approval, but in meeting collaboration it is a source of lost productivity (in addition to inproductive meetings themselves). This is a problem we want to address. We want people to be able to stick to email, but still have a shared space for the meeting. We also aim to make it so that every merting you organize automatically includes a meeting specific email address, teleconference number and real-time collaboration space. The learning curve should be low and it should interface with familiar systems (email, outlook, google calendar etc). We want to interface with backoffice systems (such as sharepoint) to make meeting results available to employees.

   We are still in private beta and improving the product towards this goal.

   Your feedback well underlines this confusion of understanding the exact value of this service early on. We will improve both the site and simplify the software further in the upcoming weeks to highlight the benefits today. Thanks!

6. Visit https://www.meetin.gs. Spend no more than 5-10 seconds on the home page. What do you think the site is about?
   After looking at the website for about 8 seconds, I thought the site was about a place where people can have virtual meetings with no hassle, no downloading softwares, and don’t have to enter any passwords to join the meeting.
   Now go back to the site and comment on various elements of the site.

   The home page is simple to read and very clean but it seems like I’ve seen that layout before.  I love the fact that it has a feedback tab located on the left of the screen.  That tells me that they really care about the opinions of others.  It is also pretty cool that the website has various blogs about improving meetings.
   
   Sign up for the service. You will receive your free private beta invitation the next day.
   I’ve signed up! : )
   Once you are logged in, what do you think of the sign up process?

   I believe that the sign up process was pretty simple.  Its great that you can sign up with your facebook account.  One downy is that in the sign up email, the words wasn’t properly spaced. But a plus is the 5 simple steps to be become a master of meeting.
   

   Check out the “getting started” guide. You can find a link on the bottom or during the sign up process. What do you think of the guide?
   When I clicked on getting started at the bottom of the page, the pdf window popped up but unfortunately the window was blank.  I don’t know if its because I’m using Firefox but it shouldn’t matter what internet browser is being used. I tried several times but still a blank window.
   Create your first meeting. Then upload materials, edit the agenda, add a few notes, and if possible, invite some friends to participate.
    
   What do you find bothersome? What do you like?
   What I found bothersome is that its not on a secure line (https:). If I want to set up meetings I only want the people I invite to see it.  Also, when I first seen the website, I thought it offered live meetings where people can see what you actually are doing.  For example: you want to show the people in your meeting how to navigate through a website. I didn’t really find anything exciting about the website. What I do like is that it is simple to use.
   
   How do you think the site compares to other similar sites/competitors like doodle.com and yamlabs.com?
   I went to doodle.com and I noticed that you can connect with google or outlook calenders.  I tried looking on Meetin to see if it can do the same but I couldn’t find it. Compared to the other competitors I think that Meetin is similar to others.
   
   Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
   I believe that the website is pretty simple to use and also clean in design but I also believe that today people like the personal connection with others. For instance seeing and hearing the person who is giving the meeting through the internet.

7. I think you should clearly define what you offer in a tagline (which is typically found beneath or near your brand logo on the homepage).

   If you see yourself as a solution to email collaboration, then sum it up in one sentence and use this to define your brand on your homepage. If you had something like this, then I would’ve understood right away, and so will potential visitors on your homepage.

   “Meeting collaboration made simple as an alternative solution to email exchange.”

8. Visit https://www.meetin.gs. Spend no more than 5-10 seconds on the home page. What do you think the site is about?
   I think it’s a scheduler / organizer app.

   Now go back to the site and comment on various elements of the site.
   The style of the site resembles office apps, which is good in this case. However it also remind me on doodle, but of course they go for office looks too. The features preview actually made me pretty interested, especially the “live” update one.
   Without registration there’s not much to do however.

   Sign up for the service. You will receive your free private beta invitation the next day.
   Done.

   Once you are logged in, what do you think of the sign up process?
   It was very straight-forward. It’s also nice that I don’t have to fill in my data, only if I want to.
   My only comment would be that many people (and mailing systems) don’t like links assigned to text inside mails, so you should probably avoid doing it, or just include the whole sign-in URL too.

   Check out the “getting started” guide. You can find a link on the bottom or during the sign up process. What do you think of the guide?
   I think it’s a typical example of the tutorials that try to teach you things by showing a screenhot and telling what does what. It works, but few people will read it unless they get stuck somewhere.
   And since it appears in a fixed size box, you could’ve made the PDF to have it’s pages to fit into it, cause now scrolling down to read the “legend” cuts the first image in half and you have to scroll back to see where the numbers are pointing.

   Create your first meeting. Then upload materials, edit the agenda, add a few notes, and if possible, invite some friends to participate.
   It’s quite easy. My comments here would be:
   I could be just lazy, but I expected the clock to open a dropdown menu with full hours or even better, a table with the selected day’s hours that could instantly show me when I have free time (or rather when do I have other meeting scheduled).
   I find that the connection between certain items is not clear enough. The shared notes section should be visually separated a bit (even a thin like on top would work), as now the materials seem to have a comment box under them and to the right. It’s quite easy to mix them up.
   Creating a shared online document is a bit misleading if not confusing. When you click to create one you get asked for its title then the title gets added to the list and nothing else happens. After that you have to manually click edit in the middle box to add any content to it. My guess is that not many people will want to add empty documents, so you might as well move focus to adding content straight after creation, or provide a creation box looking like the one for embedding.
   It’s never made clear to me that if I have to send a text e-mail to add a note, and one with an attachment to add a file, than what happens if I send a mail with both?
   It’s also a bit tedious to manually add a comment if you upload a picture for example, and you cant even add an explanation directly to it, only a comment. One rarely wants to just toss in a picture without a word. You also cannot print images.

   What do you find bothersome?
   It’s very confusing that new shared documents appear on top of the list, while the new files on the bottom, they should all appear in the same cronological order in my opinion, even if you separate them by type, which i feel unneccessary BTW.
   The creation page seriously lacks tooltips on buttons. For many you have to guess from it’s link or just click it to find out what it does.
   Different meetings does not interact with each other at any way. I don’t even get a warning if I set up two meetings to the same date.

   What do you like?
   The drag-box is handy. In general the basic functions are easy to use, and work just like you expect them to (with above mentioned exceptions) so you don’t have to spend time trying to learn it.
   The small boxes with the things to do to create a meeting is a nice idea too. Too bad you have to decide for yourself when one is done, and then manually close it. Maybe they are intended to be reminders, but I expected them to close once you’ve done a step.

   How do you think the site compares to other similar sites/competitors like doodle.com and yamlabs.com?
   I don’t know yamlabs but I guess it’s more or less like doodle. Currently doodle is obviously a lot more refined but it also offers more functions. I don’t remember it having a document/file attachment option though, but it does have a calendar to visually represent your meetings, and the poll system is an easier and faster(!) alternative to your commenting one.
   Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
   I think that in it’s current state, while this site has some good features it doesn’t offer enough to make me want to use it. The thing is that if I already have to use some other calendar app plus emails, then planning meetings through your site only gives me yet another tool that I have to regularly monitor. If the site could be made to work more actively with calendar apps, or even have it’s own, than I would certainly consider using it.
   And some small things:
   “Are you sure want to remove <filename (uploaded)> ?” question seem to have a tendency to use unnecessary line breaks, sometimes right before the question mark. And I did not use long file names.
   I guess it’s for debugging and/or you just forgot it but when setting whether a date is good or not for you, there’s also a 1 or 0 presented (for yes/no).

9. Excellent points once again, Zack, thank you very much. I like your clear example, something that human beings would understand.

   I will give you a bit of context how we see our positioning compared to the rest of the market place. This gives an idea on the problem on the market place we aim to solve.

   As I see it now, we have 5 major categories of competitors:

   Real-Time Virtual Conferencing
   Problem: virtual conferencing providers do a great job in providing a real-time collaboration space for online meetings. Email is still needed for organizing and sharing files/notes/recording. We see virtual conferencing providers as our partners for integration, as we do not want to compete with their already superb offerings but rather tap into areas before and after meetings where meeting communication is still cumbersome.

   Feature-Packed Meeting Collaboration Spaces
   Problem: full-blown meeting collaboration spaces I’ve tried are too complex, have too many features and easily compete with the existing virtual conferencing providers that companies might use. Providers who try to include tools for running meetings (such as mind maps, SWOT tools etc.) risk being average on every area and competing with existing tools that people might already have.

   Meeting Scheduling Services
   Problem: takes care of scheduling, but files, notes etc. still move through email. Doodle etc. are useful tools and perform one function very well. We however believe it is important to take care of the meeting related communication all the way through.

   Agenda and Notes Taking Focused Services
   Problem: not all meetings are agenda or action focused. Some more creative or informal meetings do not need to be highly structured.

   Company-specific Collaboration Spaces
   Problem: if you organize an online space for cross-organizational collaboration, participants often need a manual, a user account, a specific web address, and access through firewalls. Tools are often focused on other things such as project management and are not necessarily designed from the point of view of running meetings. Not to mention that it is a lot of work for the organizer to take care of, including user accounts – a meetin.gs space is ready in a few minutes.

   So how I see it is this: there is a spectrum of highly complex and highly structured collaboration tools that are either too hard, have high management overhead or are too structured to be effective for cross-organizational collaboration. Then there are very simple tools that help you to schedule a time but do not help you with the rest of the communication challenges before, during and after the meetings.

   Our sweet spot is right in the middle by creating an easy-to-use interface for meeting collaboration as an alternative to email exchange (still work to do), interfacing with various email and calendaring solutions that have 100% user approval, enable people to use readily available meeting-related solutions (such as virtual conferencing and mobile applications, both features currently under development) and integrate the file management to back-office collaboration tools (Dropbox, Sharepoint etc.).

   In this way we wouldn’t be stepping on the toes of existing collaboration platforms, calendars or virtual conferencing solutions that companies might already be using, but rather would be solving the very problem of finding a suitable time, keeping everyone updated and making it easier to collaborate on notes and files – neither without the communication overhead provided by email nor the problems involved in typical cross-organizational collaboration situation.

   Would appreciate your view on this in terms of making the value proposition even more appealing and simple to understand.

10. Thank you for your excellent observations. It is true that ipads dominate, making one even perhaps to get an early impression that this is a mobile application of some sorts.
    It is now obvious that the getting started guide needs to be provided in a much better and clearer HTML format primarily and PDF as a secondary download option for those who need a paper copy.
    Visual customization is coming very soon, it is on the development schedule. HTTPS login is already in place, full HTTPS service is coming soon too.
    Facebook integration will be improved by allowing you to invite people who are your facebook friends. This is something we also look to work with for example Google, so that you can invite people directly from your Google address book and also see your own availability integrated with Google calendar.
    Showing something about a meeting the side of Facebook feels a bit separate now, as this is not a public community: maybe the ability to use Facebook’s internal messaging for meeting requests and approvals could work. This is however a bit unreliable as it requires all your meeting participants then to accept to use a Meetin.gs facebook app, which I believe is not a very easy thing to persuade people to do. It would also be great to have meetings appear as private Facebook events, but this is still beyond my wildest dreams in terms of technical implementation.
     

11. Live meeting support and HTTPS is coming soon. We aim to integrate various live meeting solutions, as there are excellent options already on the market but most of them do not do a good job (if any at all) in terms of email communication and file sharing, so there is an obvious win-win situation to be found by combining various solutions.
    We are already investigating deeper integration with google and outlook during scheduling. We also look into introducing a meetin.gs plugin for these solutions.

12. Wow, thank you KovacsPeter for the attention to detail.
    Clock with ready options for setting the time quickly is on our todo list. It is certainly interesting to make use of a calendar integration here to pick available times.
    We are currently thinking of separating the shared notes section and drop the three column view in favor of two columns and a Facebook-style foldable chat that would act as shared notes. This makes the page simpler, increases screen estate for material content and allows the chat to remain visible at all times. Not to mention clear separation from material comments.
    Excellent observation on opening the document editing immediately after naming a shared document. Also the order of new documents in the material list. We are also looking into drag & drop ordering the materials to your liking but new documents should appear always on the bottom.
    If you email a file with a note in the text body, the text content of your email will appear as the comment of the uploaded file. This is not mentioned in the email text.
    Regarding cross-meeting interaction: you can currently add material from a previous meeting. Other similar features are in the plans, including a more visual way to browse meetings as sort of “projects”. Many meetings are inside a continuum and there is currently no way to see the relationship between multiple meetings.
    We will improve the “wizard” that shows you what to do by having more interaction with the items in the list, such as closing items already completed.
    Once again, thanks!
     
     
     

13. Visit https://www.meetin.gs. Spend no more than 5-10 seconds on the home page. What do you think the site is about?
    Your site looks like it enable various conversations for multiple people to make meeting easier and faster than email.
    
    Now go back to the site and comment on various elements of the site.
    I immediatly like that your website is vibrant and colorful using nice graphics without to much fuss on the homepage. Oddly, when I look at the first picture I understand that it’s supposed to people around a meeting table but it makes me think of a crown. I think that your homepage is lacking definition. Your tagline is so simple that it seems to leave out what your site actually does. All I know is that whatever your do it’s an alternative to email. Instead of reading what it’s an alternative to I would have like to have seen what you do in a nutshell. I really liked the graphic in the middle with the social networking sites at the top it. That was a nice way to see other sites that yours can work with. Under the last graphic which Send me a log in link to my email: states no downloads and etc I don’t quit understand what are organizational boundaries? I’m sure it’s just a term I’m not familar with but you need to make sure your users are crystal clear on what each process means. I like that you have a break in color on your homepage. Are my eyes correct but in your logo the M looks like its “holding hands.” If so that’s kind of catchy but it’s hard to see if your not really looking at it in detail. I think that your blog  and feature tab should be switched around. I’m more interested in how the site works instead of reading a blog about a site I don’t know much about. That being said your blog page is very nicely done and I like that you have a pre-read of the info under each title. It’s just enough to get one interested but not so much that you feel the article is right there in totality. I also like that I can jump right to another tab from the blog page. Often time many site open up their blog page in another tab or window and it’s nice that I can seemlessly move to another area of your site. When I clicked on your features tab I quicly saw what your organizational boundaries term what saying. I really like the features page. It gave tidbits of information making sure the user saw the best points of what your site has to offer. Being that your site seemst to be quit detailed I would like to have seen how each function works. A how to video would have been very nice. I like the way that you describe the functions and feature but the ease of use is questionable. I also see that your site say sign in through your facebook account and authenicate through email. It seems that if I didn’t have a Facebook account that I would have to get one to use your site. Is that correct?
    

    Sign up for the service. You will receive your free private beta invitation the next day.
    Done.
    Once you are logged in, what do you think of the sign up process?
    On your login page you have “Send me a log in link to my email:” The words log in should be just word. The sign up process was quick and easy.
    
    Check out the “getting started” guide. You can find a link on the bottom or during the sign up process. 
    What do you think of the guide?
    The guide was pretty straigtforward. I like how it gave me more information and showed me how to navigate around your site. It was little hard to see being that the zoom was not effective. In this case a video would have been a great addition to those who work better being shown how your work in actual usage.
    
    Create your first meeting. Then upload materials, edit the agenda, add a few notes, and if possible, invite some friends to participate.
    It was easy to invite  friends and upload material for a meeting
    
    What do you find bothersome? What do you like?
    As far as the time is concerned I would have like to a see a drop down box that listed time to be clicked on with hours, 15 30 45 minutes and with an am or pm button. What I do find cumbersome is the time drop down boxes with all the times listed and you have to scroll down a long list. I would have liked to see something that it similar to setting up an alarm on a cell phone. I would like to have the materials, agend and sharrd notes sections separated. I think that it works bette when people are allowd to focus one area at a time. Even a box dividing them would work better if you wanted to keep all the info on the same page. I like that I could print my agenda. It’s always nice to have a hard document. Sharing information wasn’t quit as easy as I thought. I invited myself from another email and I saw that I would have to create another profile. I would advertise sharing if it wasn’t just quickly allowing a person to view what information you have listed for them.
    
    How do you think the site compares to other similar sites/competitors like doodle.com and yamlabs.com?
    I think that your site is much more professional and visually appealing than your compeitors.

    Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
    A video on your site is a a must becasue I am a little confused at how everything works together. Your meeting setup page should have a quick links or a tab to get to the guide if you don’t understand the process.

14. Just a tiny addition: I’ve got the emails about my meetings (which is nice), so I checked back to see what happened now that they are over. Well… nothing. So I would suggest you to indicate it somehow (other than their date being shown) on the overview page which meetings are upcoming or current, and which ones are “archived”.

15. There actually is an indicator, and it is color of the calendar icon:
    blue: past
    green: upcoming
    pink: current
    gray: unknown
    This color coding of course is not immediately obvious. Maybe a legend could be added somewhere. Thanks for the input!

16. Zack Love has been selected as an awardee.

17. Zack Love has been awarded for follow up feedback.

18. KovacsPeter has been awarded.

19. Lostness has been selected as an awardee.

20. Latasha has been awarded.

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