Whether on-site or digital: Meetings are firmly part of everyday life in most companies. With perfect preparation, however, meetings can turn from an "unwelcome necessity" into a "productive event." We will show you how the perfect meeting preparation can be achieved with blink.it using a practical example:

According to surveys, every employee spends 4.5 hours per week in meetings. Not only is this an enormous amount of time (anyone who has ever sat in an unproductive 2-hour meeting knows exactly what “a lot of time” means). Often, meetings are also not properly prepared.

With increasing number of participants, complexity, and duration, preparation becomes increasingly important: Meetings can only be productive if all participants are well-prepared in advance and can contribute effectively. If this does not happen, not only is one person's work time wasted. It can easily amount to many hours of several participants.

An online preparation can solve the problem! In the following, I will explain how you can prepare meetings online with blink.it and show you a current practical example.

1. Why should you prepare meetings online?

2. Insight into an effective meeting preparation course

3. Conclusion: Is it worth the effort to prepare meetings online?

Why should you prepare meetings online?

For the preparation of meetings, most companies use traditional methods: For simple organization, an agenda, personal discussions, or round emails are often sufficient. However, with complex topics or small events, it becomes more challenging to prepare meetings properly. Konstantin from blink.it sees several problems with traditional preparation methods:

If I approach each employee individually and explain the format and the task, it takes forever with more than 15 people! Getting all parties together in an explanation meeting is also difficult with packed calendars. So I needed a solution that wouldn't require too much work in the organization and where all employees can inform themselves when it suits them best. For this, a blink.it course is ideal.

What advantages does blink.it offer for preparing meetings?

1. On the blink.it platform, you have all employees gathered in one place.

2. Everyone can flexibly inform themselves and prepare when they have time.

3. You can upload videos and important documents for preparation in addition to pure text information.

4. In the course statistics, you can see which employees have viewed the course. This way, you always know who has prepared properly.

5. In the comment section, employees can ask follow-up questions. The organizer can then answer these before the event or meeting.

6. Through features like the newsletter or auto-reminder, you can automatically remind your employees about the preparation.

Next, you will get an insight into the blink.it course that Konstantin created to prepare for an important meeting:

Excursus: What kind of meeting is being discussed in the example?

At blink.it, we regularly have large meetings with 10 or more employees from different teams. One of these meetings is the "Data Party" where each employee prepares and presents a small data evaluation from their own daily work for all colleagues.

The challenges for organizer Konstantin were:

1. Clearly defining the organization and scheduling for all participants.

2. Ensuring that everyone knows what they need to prepare.

3. Clarifying questions in advance so that the actual meeting runs smoothly.

Insight into an effective meeting preparation course

This is what the final blink.it course for online preparation of our meeting looks like:

Example of an online course for meeting preparation // Source: blink.it

1. Structure of the meeting preparation in the online course:

• Start: The preparation course starts with short videos from organizer Konstantin: The first video is a welcome to the course (about 1 minute). In the second video, Konstantin explains the concept of the meeting (about 5 minutes). The third video covers the preparation (about 2 minutes). Konstantin recorded all videos with the blink.it kit. After that, there is a survey where employees can indicate if they need help. Lastly, there is a video guide for the presentation that all employees should work on for preparation.

• Chapter 1: Two short videos from previous meetings serve as examples of what the result of one’s own preparation can look like.

• Chapter 2: The second chapter contains information for employees with specific tasks in the meeting.

• Chapter 3: After the meeting, organizer Konstantin uploaded the recordings. This way, all employees can review them later.

Here you can see one of the short videos. Konstantin explains the preparation in about 2 minutes:

2. Scope of the meeting preparation

The preparation course for our meeting therefore only has a total of ten individual contents (blinks). The recordings were added only after the meeting. For less complex meeting formats, fewer blinks are sufficient: One introductory video, an explanation for the preparation, and important documents – you'll already have an effective preparation in the online course.

3. Time investment for meeting preparation

For the employees, the online preparation in the course took only about 15 minutes of work. In fact, creating the course also goes quickly, reports Konstantin:

I spent about four hours on the entire course. About two of those hours were for shooting the videos. I had already thought about my concept beforehand. In those four hours, I created all the blinks and then filled them with videos and documents. Afterwards, I only needed a few minutes to upload the recordings.

Conclusion: Is it worth the effort to prepare meetings online?

Four hours may sound like a lot at first to prepare a meeting. However, you should consider that a meeting lasting over two hours with 17 people is already a small company event. If things go poorly, that can easily amount to at least 34 hours of work time. Likely more, if all participants have also invested time in poor preparation. Thus, with a preparation course, you can make working time more productive. Additionally, you can use the course for preparation time and again, saving a lot of time for future meetings.

Konstantin therefore assesses the effort as “absolutely worthwhile” – especially since the meeting after the preparation in the online course “went perfectly as planned and exceeded all expectations of the management”!

Preparing meetings in the blink.it course is worthwhile for you under the following conditions:

• from 8 or 10 people (depending on complexity), all of whom need to prepare something, e.g., a short presentation.

• if the process or preparation is too complex to explain in an email or individually to each participant.

• if you conduct meetings remotely, for example via Zoom, and want to make the recordings available online afterwards.

• if meetings or events occur regularly and you do not want to explain the preparation each time. In the online course, all important information is securely documented permanently!