How long was the longest meeting you were ever in?

So... as an aside, if anyone is ever tasked with getting lunch for a "Meeting" or a "Conference" I'm going to teach you a trick (2 actually). Here is what you do.

You announce to the room:

"I am going out to get a bag full of tacos. Would anyone like any?"

When the first person responds with anything other than Yes or No, you say "You misunderstood. I am getting Tacos. A bag full. It is merely a question of how many you want. No special orders. I'm not tracking anything. I'm going to tally it all up, add 10% to be safe and come back with X tacos. Who's in?"

The second option is to count the people, multiple by 3 and go to McDonalds. Half Hamburgers, half Cheeseburgers, and 2 Large fries per person. Vegetarians/Vegans tend to bring their own food, but you can do a 1/10 or 1/5 swag and pick up salads if you want.

8 hour teleconference trouble shooting call

I have been a PL, HHD XO, Rear Det Commander, and a High School Teacher. It wouldn't have been a work week without be a week without a mind-numbingly long meeting that could have been addressed in a 1 page Email.

I used to say "If this meeting lasts more than four hours, I'll have to call my doctor.

It was an exercise development meeting called an "Initial Planning Conference" or IPC. Everybody and their brother needed to state their objectives for the upcoming exercise.

Since I was the one assigned to "facilitate" running the thing, I had to stay for the entire 8 hours and 26 minutes.

There was one meeting here....has been awhile ago...the first 4-5 hours ran well after duty hours...only 1/2 the material covered, so commander closed down at that point and re-convened the next day for another 3-4 hours.... PERSONALLY, I don't see the benefit to that kind of a meeting.

Other - 2 Days

Critical Design Review for the SBIRS Program HEO satellite. (SBIRS = Space Based Infrared Systems / HEO = Highly Elliptical Orbit).

It was held at the prime contractor facility and consisted of basically stepping through all levels of the design of the satellite hardware and software. It included all testing and design up to that point as well as measurement of notional performance and ability to satisfy all system level requirements.

It took a lot of coffee. Of course, I'm an acquisitions officer, so my life is mostly meetings.

Have you ever gotten to the point where you will come up with any excuse, mind you ANY just to get out of there? Yeah.....me neither. ;)

I was at JRTC, had 5 meetings back to back but it had all the same attendees. So it was really one meeting; after 6 hours and a list of tasks to accomplish I suggested we take a break so we could get stuff done. My advise was taken so well but we did. It seemed we were talking about things with suspenses that were elapsing during the meeting.