FAQ
What is the purpose of Meeting Canary?
Meeting Canary exists to make meeting better. Better can mean:
- displaying in real time who contributes and who does not, to help with inclusion;
- real time indicators which show Focus, Inclusion, Respect and Energy (FIRE indices) to help improve meetings;
- real time cost calculation – to display exactly how much a meeting is actually costing.
Who is Meeting Canary aimed at?
Any company who feels that too much time is being spent in meetings, recent statistics suggest this affects most companies, large and small, and as much as $400B is wasted each year with unnecessary and unproductive online meetings and that is just for the US.
Is Meeting Canary for internal or external meetings?
Primarily internal, it would be possible to use Meeting Canary for any kind of meeting however being as this is a tool for making meetings better it is Meeting Canary’s intention for it to be used for internal meeting improvements and efficiency gains.
What does the Meeting Canary do?
Meeting Canary is an actual participant in a Teams meeting – a small animation of a bird changes character to help nudge participants based on their actions – it is light touch and non-judgemental, so it might look at its watch if people arrive late, it might hold up a mute symbol if someone speaks but is muted, it might look a little troubled if people ‘over speak’ and so on.
But it also can be interrogated – either by using a ‘wake word’ eg ‘Hey Meeting Canary what’s the time in Los Angeles’ to which it replies in the meeting chat ‘it’s 19:43 in the evening’ it can also help meeting structure by recording action points and also recording an agenda and save that for next time.
Finally after a meeting has ended two things are sent to all participants – the statistics gathered (but not recordings – Meeting Canary does NOT hold recordings – either audio or transcript) as well as a short survey asking if this meeting was useful. These reports/surveys can be made available for all participants or just the meeting organiser.
Can I see how Meeting Canary calculates things like the FIRE indicators?
The FIRE indicators are aggregated scores based on many different measures – some are very simple – video on, video off, audio on, audio off, some are based on behaviours from meeting participants such as late arrival or early departure, but many are based on complex AI driven calculations based on an analysis of NLU (Natural Language Understanding), speaker time, language density (being verbose can often drive energy levels down!), profanity, over speaking, interruptions and so forth. Meeting Canary is configurable so you will be able to see (and adjust) these metrics to suit your organisation.
Do I have to have the Meeting Canary present in all meetings?
Meeting Canary is intended to be a helpful addition to all online and hybrid meetings, having the bird visible to all participants gives a clear indications that it is there to help. However you can choose which meetings it automatically joins or invite it on meeting by meeting basis. For example there may be instances – a large ‘town hall’ meeting for example – where the Meeting Canary’s presence may be irrelevant. If the Meeting Canary is not needed, then it can be removed at any time via the participants panel.
Is there a limit to how many people can attend a meeting?
No. However we imagine that Meeting Canary will be most useful when meeting participation is sub 30 people – this makes the nudging of good behaviours and real-time statistics on participants most helpful.
Does Meeting Canary keep recordings of meetings?
No! That said in order to analyse certain meeting behaviours Meeting Canary has to carry out some complex NLU (National Language Understanding) and must ’listen’ to the flow of a conversation in order to analyse it. However once that analysis has occurred we do not keep a recording and we do not keep a transcript of the meeting. Teams already allows for recordings assuming consent is given.
How is Meeting Canary hosted?
From the Teams app store Meeting Canary is hosted on its own cloud servers. However, for corporate subscribers Meeting Canary can be hosted within the client’s own cloud environment thus providing for the highest level of security as no data will leave the companies network.
Can I use Meeting Canary with hybrid meetings?
Yes. However there will be a difference in the way that Meeting Canary reports. If a meeting is made up of say 10 participants 5 in one room and 5 external, Meeting Canary can only see 6 participants, whilst Meeting Canary will be able to differentiate between different voices and also be able to help with the same good and bad meeting behaviours Meeting Canary will not be able to associate voice 1 as Jane and voice 2 as David as it will not have access to that information.
What levels of security do Meeting Canary operate to?
Security is our highest priority, we are working to ISO27001 the international standard to manage information security, and expect formal certification in 2024. Architecture and Security Overview
Can Meeting Canary be used to analyse past meeting recordings?
Yes. We have an additional app designed for corporate use which can take past meeting transcript recordings and analyse against Meeting Canary’s FIRE (Focus, Inclusivity, Respect and Energy) index.
What post meeting reports are available from Meeting Canary?
All aspects of each meeting is summarised in a meeting report – numbers of open and closed questions, cost of meeting, scores against Meeting Canary’s FIRE (Focus, Inclusivity, Respect and Energy) index, how much time each person spoke for, how they interacted with each other and so forth.
Does Meeting Canary have survey tools for post meeting analysis?
Yes. Each meeting will generate a configurable meeting survey – from the very simple ‘was this meeting required’ to the more complex we can survey all meeting participants after all meetings. See Post Meeting Survey
What aspect of Meeting Canary relates to AI?
Pretty much all of it! Obviously some of the actions we are noting are simple and require no AI, such as late or early arrival, camera on of off etc etc. But when it comes to calculating types of questions, energy levels falling or rising, spotting interruptions, sorting out who said what and when – these are hard complex calculations that make the most of the very latest in ML (Machine Learning) and NLU (Natural Language Understanding), all of the Meeting Canary team are experts in AI and hold several patents as well as huge back catalogues of published, peer reviewed papers and some even wrote the books on which the most complex of AI challenges like argumentation technology are based.
Can I configure Meeting Canary in anyway?
Because this is a ‘new frontier’ in technology we are making sure that as many of the features as we have are themselves configurable so we can allows you to design and craft your Meeting Canary exactly to your own needs.
Does data leave Meeting Canary and go to third party products?
The core functionality does not send data to third parties. However post meeting summaries using LLM’s and some voice assistant commands do use 3rd party products. However these features can be disabled if needed for compliance.
Is Meeting Canary designed for individual or group use?
Both. Meetings are an exchange of information between people. Meeting Canary provides ‘in meeting’ help and support by gently guiding people towards good meeting practice through real time nudging, identification of the main contributors and highlighting other measures that are more likely to create a great meeting. This can help the meeting organiser and/or the individual participant to improve the efficacy and efficiency of a meeting. MeetingCanary also provides post meeting analysis of the way a meeting went. These reports can be configured down to the individual contributor level and/or to the whole meeting, how it was conducted and even to a longitudinal view as to how a series of meetings improved (say if one of the measures deemed important was inclusivity – with time MeetingCanary can quantify that improvement).