Meeting

A meeting is when two or more people come together to discuss one or more topics, often in a formal or business setting, but meetings also occur in a variety of other environments. Meetings can be used as form of group decision-making and as a setting for sharing of information or intelligence.

A meeting refers to a gathering with a specific agenda and not just mere gathering of people casually talking to each other. Meetings may occur face-to-face or virtually, as mediated by communications technology, such as a telephone conference call, a skyped conference call or a videoconference. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a meeting as "an act or process of coming together" - for example "as [...] an assembly for a common purpose [...]".

Meeting planners and other meeting professionals may use the term "meeting" to denote an event booked at a hotel, convention center or any other venue dedicated to such gatherings.

Anthropologist Helen B. Schwartzman defines a meeting as "a communicative event involving three or more people who agree to assemble for a purpose ostensibly related to the functioning of an organization or group." For her, meetings are characterized by "multiparty talk that is episodic in nature, and participants either develop or use specific conventions for regulating this talk."

The term "meeting" may refer to a lecture (one presentation), seminar (typically several presentations, small audience, one day), conference (mid-size, one or more days), congress (large, several days), exhibition or trade show (with staffed stands being visited by passers-by), workshop (smaller, with active participants), training course, team-building session and kick-off event.

Common types of meeting include:

Other varieties include breakfast meetings off-site meetings (or Awayday meetings in the UK), and "stand-up meetings" where participants stand up to encourage brevity.

Since a meeting can be held once or often, the meeting organizer has to determine the repetition and frequency of occurrence of the meeting: one-time, recurring meeting, or a series meeting such as a monthly "lunch and learn" event at a company, church, club or organization in which the placeholder is the same, but the agenda and topics to be covered vary.^{[citation needed]} In Russian, a "flying meeting" (Russian: летучий митинг, romanized: letuchij miting) is a hastily called brief meeting.