Tungle.blog

The Way We Meet – Using Web Services to Bring Your Network Together

3 factors are changing the way we meet across distances: 

1. The economy – companies, teams, departments simply don’t have the travel budgets they used to anymore
2. The environment – many organizations are cutting back on travel in an effort to reduce carbon emissions
3. The availability of meeting software and applications – audio bridges, desktop sharing apps, webinar services, collaborative presentations, etc

Considering #’s 1 and 2, #3 is becoming more and more popular as a replacement for long distance and cross-company meetings.  Even Obama is using web tools to meet with the American public.

Now, Obama has a pretty dedicated staff organizing his meetings, but for the rest of us, once a meeting gets booked, it’s easy to forget to initiate these services.  In the end, we often end up resorting to old fashioned methods like emailing a document and reviewing it over the phone.  It gets the job done, but the process isn’t as seamless or effective.

A simple solution is to include the service information in your initial meeting invitation.

There are 2 ways to do this with Tungle:

1. Add it to the Location field
2. Include details in the Personal message field

Both fields are included in the meeting invitation you send out, and are automatically added to your calendar when the meeting gets booked.  If any of your invitees are Tungle users, the info will also be added to their calendars. 

If your invitees are not Tungle users, they will get a regular calendar invite when the meeting gets booked.  The invite will include the dial-in number, link or other meeting service information that you put in the initial Tungle invitation, and will be added directly to their calendars when they accept the invite.

It’s a simple and efficient way to get the information into everyone’s calendars so they can easily access it come meeting time.

Want to try it?  Sign in to your Tungle account.

Not a Tungler yet?  Get an account here.

It's All About You! Yes, You!

Usability and listening to your feedback is part of our DNA.  We are reaching out to you, people of Montreal, to come in for some usability tests.

What is a usability session? It’s not painful, it’s actually fun.

You spend 60 minutes with us, where we show you some stuff that we are working on.  While you are experiencing our new stuff, you give us feedback, comments, suggestions.  Anything goes from the color choice, the layout, the flow, the features, etc.  We take it all in.  It is by no means a test of your intelligence, it’s a test of the simplicity of our service.

When you leave, you get a nice folding grocery bag, but more importantly, you know that we will take your comments seriously and include them in our service.

Email us to setup a time for the session (marc at tungle dot com) or just drop in and say, "I’m here for a usability test" and we will take you in.

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 P.S.  I would like to introduce our newest Tungler.  Jacou, our Dir of Product Management, had a baby girl this weekend.  Congratulations to him and his wife Isabelle, and welcome to the team Mylene.

Seth Godin Defines Meetings

In a recent post, master marketer Seth Godin defines 3 classic types of meetings, and 2 types of questions, which help us understand why we meet and how.

Here are a few takeaways from the post:

• Define the type of meeting you’re having, and make sure everyone attending knows it too.
• Keep your meeting on track.  But if you see it moving in another direction, acknowledge the change so you don’t lose anyone.
• Debate is a good thing.  Prioritize information gathering so that everyone is in-the-know, but allow time for this type of discussion too.

Read Seth’s full article here>

Did You Know?

Statistics show that the majority of business meetings are one-on-one.  In addition, the majority of one-on-one meetings organized by people in outward-facing roles (sales and biz dev professionals, consultants, recruiters, etc) are between people in different companies who use different email and calendar applications.

Did you also know that the favoured method of organizing meetings has, in the past, been phone and email?

Phone and email take a lot of time and energy, yet professionals have relied on them for so long because it was their only option.

With email, you’ve got to go back and forth between your calendar and inbox, proposing times, sorting replies, checking your availability and hopefully finding a time that doesn’t conflict with your calendar.

With phone, you’ve got to have your calendar open in front of you, or you risk double booking yourself.  You make a verbal commitment and then you’ve got to manually add it to your calendar and hope the other person does too so that your meeting isn’t missed.

Add different time zones into the mix and you’ve got yourself one major scheduling headache.

Here’s how Tungle solves it:

• Create a new meeting invitation and propose multiple times – you can view your calendar in Tungle, so you know when you’re available
• Select contacts and send

People you invite can be on any email or calendar application (or have no calendar at all), and won’t have to sign up to Tungle to reply.

Let’s say you invite one person.  Here’s what would happen next:

• They receive an email invite and click the link to open your meeting page
• They see all your proposed times and simply select one that suits them
• They click “Book meeting”
• The meeting is booked, you both get an email confirmation, and the meeting is automatically added to your calendar for you

And it does more:

• If the person were in a different time zone, Tungle would’ve automatically adjusted your proposed times
• If you had added new events to your calendar while the meeting was still pending, Tungle would’ve automatically updated your proposed times to prevent conflicts
• If none of your proposed times had fit your invitee’s schedule, Tungle would’ve notified you by email
• If you’re inviting someone who’s often on-the-go, they can easily reply from their smartphone (iPhone, BlackBerry, etc) without ever signing up or downloading anything

All this happens automatically, so all you need to do is send the invitation, and all your invitee needs to do is pick a time.

It’s fast, it’s easy and it’s what your calendar should be able to do for you.  With Tungle, it can.

Not a Tungler yet?  Sign up here >