Meeting Overload

Seth Godin has a great post about meetings.  He bemoans the overabundance of meetings in the work environment and proceeds to deconstruct them into a few categories ("just so everyone knows, what are you up to, what does everyone think, we need a decision now, hanging out meetings, to hear myself talk meetings") with suggestions on how to make them more effective.   For some categories of meetings he advises limiting presenters to 2 minutes with an egg timer, while for others he suggests a written document provided to attendees the day in advance.  Among his more controversial suggestions is that all meetings should be held without chairs to accelerate the meeting process and keep people focused on task.