Meetings can be a real drag. Sure, you get to step away from the desk, get out of the office, maybe even talk over coffee or lunch if you’re lucky, but they’re not all fun chats and appetizers. Meetings can often require a lot of time and preparation to be successful, and scheduling them can be complex at best. That’s where new app Lowdown comes in.
Essentially like a personal assistant in app form (sorry, I know ‘personal assistant’ is a term oft over-used when it comes to organization and productivity apps), Lowdown pulls information from your calendar, LinkedIn account, social accounts, e-mail and maps to help you prepare, arrive, and take notes in a snap.
Lowdown is, above all else, an excellent lesson in the power of integration. The creators behind the app know their audience: busy people who are tired of shuffling through LinkedIn profiles, complicated schedules, and a dozen Google Maps tabs to make sure they know the who’s, what’s and where’s of their meetings.
photo by david joyce
Lowdown keeps everything in one place: your schedule, contacts, e-mailed meeting notes and changes and even maps to get you where you need to be. It even goes a step further by using your social accounts to pull mutual interests, event plans in common and mutual friends and contacts for networking purposes. Pretty slick, even if it is a little unsettling how much one might be able to learn about us with just one meeting prep app.
While Lowdown is a little on the spendy side at £4.99 per user/month (or £50 for the year), users who have trouble reconciling a busy schedule and a social life might find a lot of use in an app that seeks to merge the two.
What do you think? Is Lowdown a meeting prep-and-planning solution that would work for you?