19 May Ace Your Business Meetings With These Apps
Most of us are well acquainted with the pains and inefficiencies involved in business meetings. You need to make sure you know who you’re meeting to avoid any social faux pas. There’s the hassle of having to arrange transport plus working out how long it will take to get to the meeting venue. Then there’s needing to share meeting presentations, notes and transcriptions not to mention trying to facilitate an effective brainstorming session.
Fortunately enough, we live in an age where if there’s a problem- there’s an app that can help. We’ve scoured the app stores and found three of the best apps for streamlining the processes involved in business meetings. If you give these a try, you’ll never know how you coped without them.
Refresh
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Have you ever been in a meeting and you just can’t remember who is who? Or perhaps you always find yourself scrambling for information about the meeting participants right up until you step into the room.
Well, luckily there is a new app out there ready to help you prepare for a meeting like a pro.
Refresh is a handy little iOS app that just came out of its beta phase in April. This smart calendar can pull together information about the people you are meeting with in a dossier type format, arming you with valuable information to make the meeting count.
It works by consolidating the information in your local calendar, contacts, Evernote, Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo and Exchange to provide you with relevant insights pertinent to the meeting.
Instead of having to search through linkedin or facebook to try and work out who is who at the meeting, Refresh will send you information from their social media like photos and job title.
You’ll never have to do that last minute research again.
Refresh is free and available for download in the App Store.
Mindomo
Mindomo is a mind mapping app. To some this might seem like an unnecessary extra, but next time you’re desperately searching for a white board marker or piece of butcher’s paper, you’ll be glad you downloaded it.
Mindomo is more than just a basic application that allows you to create a mind map on a screen. It’s loaded with features that make brainstorming ideas during meetings quick and easy. Mindomo allows you to create presentations, collaborate with multiple people in real time and embed videos and other media. There are options to create org charts, concepts charts or circular graphics and you have the ability to design themes, add notes and track changes.
Since Mindomo works on both mobile and desktops platforms, there are many different ways in which this app can be used to aid and help brainstorming in meetings. There is the freedom for each member of the meeting to collaboratively brainstorm using an individual mobile devices or Mindomo can be presented on a desktop and projector for all to see.
And instead of the mind map content having to be transcribed into a presentation, Mindomo gives you the freedom to turn your mind maps directly into multi-media presentations. This app not only allows you to digitise the process of brainstorming but streamlines and enhances the process.
It works on all desktop platforms and is available for free download in the Google Play Store and App Store.
Cal
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Cal is a smart calendar app created by Any.do. Unlike Refresh and Mindomo which are designed to help you prepare and be efficient in meetings, Cal is designed to help you plan and get to meetings.
Cal has an inbuilt feature called HeadsUp which makes your work days easier by helping you get to those important meetings and appointments. The HeadsUp feature in Cal will alert you when a meeting is approaching by displaying a pop up reminder on your phone screen. By tapping on the alert, HeadsUp gives you options to find directions through Google Maps, call a taxi, to view the invitees and to send a group message notifying the attendees that you’re running late. You’ll never have to worry about getting directions or arriving on time with this app. It puts all the tools you need to get to your meeting in the one place.
The app also allows you to take notes, create reminders, compose and send meeting tasks to attendees all while the meeting is in progress. Cal allows you to share your notes, tasks and summary emails with all meeting attendees in real time during the meeting or after the meeting has taken place. There is also an automatic summary tool which integrates and summarises the notes from the meeting allowing meetings to be more streamlined and productive – there’s no need to transcribe the meeting if you have this app.
Cal is available on the App Store and Google Play Store for free.
Do you use any other apps for your meetings? Let us know in the comments below!