This morning I have to arrange a teleconference for 5 association CEOs. Before I found today’s free tools, here’s what the emails looked like:
Me: “Ok, we’ll try for a meeting Tuesday at noon. Does everyone have the call-in number?”
CEO 1: “What meeting?”
CEO 2: “Oh, you said Tuesday? Couldn’t we make it Wednesday?”
CEO 3: “Wait… what time zone?”
CEO 4: [Silence]
Luckily I’ve discovered several free tools that allow you to propose meeting times and let attendees indicate their availability.
MeetingWizard (my old favorite) is straightforward and useful. It’s clear what the options are and makes it easy to figure out when everyone can meet. I’ve used it for several events.
TimeBridge (my new favorite) will integrate into your personal calendar so you can schedule meetings on the fly. The biggest benefit is that respondents don’t have to register! Great when you’re dealing with busy CEOs.
Doodle has a great feature that allows participants to indicate if a time is absolutely unavailable, completely acceptable or potentially ok.
