I received an interesting request from a member of one of the communities I manage. They wanted to know how to use their community to run a meeting. They had tried to do it on their own and run into some problems which all stemmed from the fact that attendees who logged in at the start of the meeting and remained for over a half hour found that they had timed out when the meeting organizer asked them to download this or that document from the library.
I replied with (not including the pleasantries):
“Your community site is much better suited to use as asynchronous meeting support than a real time meeting platform. The following is a recommended strategy for using the site to support a meeting. It can be used in its entirety or any part of it can be used on its own.
1) Create a Wiki page or a Forum Topic to generate ideas for a meeting agenda.
2) For significant group events, add the meeting to the group calendar with call out links to the agenda building tools.
3) Invite attendees (or a subset) to contribute to the agenda.
4) Determine when the agenda submissions are complete and create an agenda document (off line) based on the submissions.
5) Create a directory in the Library and post the agenda and any supporting documents (presentations, etc.) in that directory.
6) Invite all attendees to download the documents from the library – ask that they do so prior to the start of the meeting.
7) Following the meeting: Post notes in the Library; Create a topic in the Forums for follow-up discussion; Invite attendees to download notes and participate in the discussion.”