Where I am, I'm it when it comes to delivering a project. Not working on a team, I guess I see things through a different window. We have department and other sorts of meetings coming out our ears. My take on it is pretty simple. If you are going to take up the time of say, 10 people in a meeting, then the outcome of the meeting should be a resolution of a situation that required those 10 people to solve. Anything else is a waste those people's time who didn't really need to be there. Meetings to impart information are particularly galling to me. You sit around being told something that an email could have handled, and then you continue sitting there while the slow folks ask silly questions - "When you said we're getting a new department manager, did that mean you aren't going to be the department manager any more?"

It's even worse when you consider that before going into these meetings, one doesn't want to get into anything heavy that is going to have to be interrupted for the meeting. I don't want to be thinking my way through some labyrinth of an algorithm only to have to try to pick up the strands later after having my brain anaesthetised for an hour. So that's more wasted time.

><s> Take a look at Scrum (especially the blog I pointed out) and see if you think they are pointless. We're talking one meeting per day, ideally lasting about 15 minutes.
>
>>Oh, great. More pointless meetings. When will somebody write a book defining the new corporate culture as "allowing people to get on with their jobs."
>>
>>>Take a look at the Scrum Agile methodology. The best part is that at the daily standup meetings, only those with tasks get to talk. Others can listen. It quickly becomes apparent who isn't doing anything. This is a very practical blog on Scrum (there are lots of blogs on Scrum <s>): http://agilethinking.net/blog/2007/02/21/when-is-scrum-not-scrum/
>>>
>>>Hank