Make Your Meetings Mobile

I stumbled across a creative new business on the web the other day -- a company that markets t-shirts with text message autoresponders.

You create a shirt on the site, choose a keyword, program your text-back response, and post your shirt on the site.

Aside from being a very cool concept, I also believe this product could qualify as a MSRD (Meeting Suckification Reduction Device) in the next edition of Boring Meetings Suck.

The website (Reactees.com) offers the ability for people to "subscribe" to individual shirts -- meaning the shirt's owner can broadcast messages to anyone who elects to receive ongoing communiques. If applied to the goal of ending Boring Meetings that Suck -- you could have a "shirt" created for every project-based committee on which you serve. Instead of creating yet another meeting for a project update, you could simply "text-in" for the latest update, or the committee's chairperson could broadcast the most recent milestone to the subscribers.

Envision creating a shirt that says "Project Status? Text 4UPDATE to 41411 for details." Anyone could get an update on your project at anytime. Everyone could have a personalized version (Don's Project, Jon's Project, etc.) and the update keyword could remain the same, with the status messages changing for the current project. The current limitation of 120 characters forces one's updates to remain pithy, and while the kernel of this idea began with a t-shirt, nothing says it has to remain a t-shirt. Add the message to your email sig line, or post it as a message on your blog or company's intranet site.

As with most good ideas -- the possibilities are endless. How can YOU apply this concept to reduce your own meeting suckification?