Redesigning a MEETING experience

Ok a short story is the best way to describe this:

Rajarajan plans a meeting with a team of managers in his campus. He tries to book a conference room. But it doesnt work. So he asks the ADMIN guy. He replies - You know what, this conf room is not in the calendar. So please print a poster and paste it. Raj was surprised but thought old world things worked still. He studiously printed a poster, a day before, pasted it promptly. THEN….

On the day of the meeting, Rajarajan is there 10mts earlier. The poster is gone. YES, its nowhere to be found. Someone not only removed it, without a trace but threw it somewhere. He patiently waited out, knocked 5mts later and said, “I have a meeting booked for 4pm”. The people inside were too busy to listen to him.

What?. Oh…we will be done in 5mts…and they went back to business. Next 10mts. No movement inside. Again he knocks..This time people have to leave and they slowly do leave. Now he goes to the projector and finds a bunch of wires dangling in air. Meanwhile people seep in slowly. Rajarajan is already frustrated to the brim. He calls the network people and they try to help him for the next 10mts and finally its on.

Now the presentation starts rolling. People by now have already lost the last sparks of enthusiasm in their eyes. One says - “Hey you know what - Friday afternoon is the best time for a presentation.” And yes he does sleep for the next 30mts of the 40mt presentation. Rajarajan stands there helplessly explaining the whole 30 slides diligently. And its all over. People stand up(some wake up) and leave with a thanks.

Rajarajan stands there with a meek apology escaping his lips.

Ussshh…what a bad arrangement of events…he muffles.

So what went wrong? Hmm almost everything. Now lets redesign this experience: Rajarajan books the meeting room online for 1 hr from 3-4pm. He walks in with his laptop. People vacate the meeting room at 3:58. Raj enters in plugs his laptop to the projector and with a jiffy it projects his screen to the wall. People are there at sharp 4 and the presentation begins. People have already switched off their mobiles, even better, the room dont receive signals and automatically switches mobile phones off :)

People sip coffee inbetween, are attentive, asks good questions, sees value in the time spent, take notes and say thank you and leave.

Rajarajan is sure to get potential projects soon. The entire meeting was automatically recorded and archived and the meeting room mails it to the convener and participants as a link to a MP3 file at the end of the meeting.

………………………

That was a nice dream….Except that the underlined items may take months/years to happen in my company, for that matter any similar company