Tuesday, 12 July, 2022 UTC
Summary
The AI-powered feedback tool Roti.express developed with Meteor improves the value of meetings and conferences, so teams get more out of them. See how now:
[image source]
Have you ever left a meeting feeling less productive? Or, worse, that the entire meeting could have been summed up in an email or Slack message?
The co-founders of French startup Roti.express feel your pain and never want that to happen again.
According to the duo, “Meeting Mania” is rampant in many companies yet causes a considerable loss of time and efficiency. Rather than solving problems, ineffective meetings chronically demotivate employees.
Taking away their time to focus on deep, meaningful work to accomplish very little during a conference call puts added stress and pressure on their shoulders. Many teams over-scheduled for meetings consistently show signs of anxiety, and some employees even quit their jobs because of it.
The Roti.express team believes efficiency and well-being in the workplace are not mutually exclusive. They aim to help companies identify which meetings generate value versus those that cost.
So they developed a feedback automation tool using AI and Meteor to improve the value of meetings, conferences, training sessions, and more. Let’s explore the Roti.express + Meteor partnership in this case study.
Say Hi To Roti.express 🍖
Co-founders Guillaume Darbonne and Antoine Durand launched Roti.express in 2017 with a singular mission:
To help teams make lasting improvements to their meetings, whether held in-person or remotely, by drawing on collective strength and the basic principles of Agility to get more out of these exchanges.
With a JavaScript developer and Solution Architect steering the ship, it’s no surprise that an appreciation for Agile methods inspired the creation of Roti.express.
First introduced in 2001 in the world of software development, Agile helps teams achieve better teamwork and reach a shared objective through:
- successive iterations or “increments”
- a capacity for adaptation
- a desire for continuous improvement
Roti.express says Agility can be applied surprisingly well to the world of meetings. Essentially, these are usually events that:
- recur (iterative) or help projects move forward (increments)
- are adapted when the context or participants change (adaptive)
- focus consistent efforts for greater effectiveness (continuous improvement)
The ROTI method (Return On Time Invested) helps teams evaluate whether the time invested in these events was spent wisely. By collecting each participant’s feedback post-event, managers can measure how effective these meetings are and how they can improve them for everyone involved.
Roti.express Leverages Agile Feedback Loop Automation Like This
How does Roti.express work? The co-founders developed a way to gauge the value of a meeting, training session, workshop, conference, etc., by looking at how each participant experiences it, gathering their useful feedback on their digital platform built with Meteor.
[image source]
On the front-end, participants utilize a simple five-star evaluation and open comment box to share their thoughts. Behind the scenes, the AI powering Roti.express analyzes this feedback to suss out the most important keywords and sentiments.
Here’s the workflow for their feedback process:
1. Create the Survey
The Roti.express founders believe the path to improving events actually lies in the minds of participants. Collecting feedback from each individual’s perspective allows teams to identify and prioritize the actions needed to iterate collectively.
Plus, employees who “endure” certain meetings find it empowering and liberating to have (at last!) the opportunity to suggest improvements and initiate changes. Surveys take just 30 seconds for participants to complete and can be anonymous.
Participants receive the link for the survey by email, instant messaging (Teams, Google Meet, etc.), or via discussion forums (like Slack). If you’d like to run the ROTI survey live in person, participants can scan a QR Code with their phone to access it.
2. Collect Real-Time Feedback
After your event, you can click the survey in the Roti.express platform to watch real-time feedback roll in. Their technology is perfectly suited for massive feedback gathering, allowing teams to collect and analyze huge batches of data ASAP.
The team is “proud to offer true, real-time data crunching.” Results are displayed as soon as they are available; no waiting or need to reload the page. Teams find this real-time data crunching incredibly satisfying and efficient.
[image source]
Roti.express collects both quantitative and qualitative metrics about participants’ feelings. Their analytical tools track progress over time and quickly identify an event that does not provide complete satisfaction.
Their Artificial Intelligence engine for the cognitive analysis of comments works regardless of the language used. While the platform calculates the average scores, the AI “rates” the perceptions expressed in respondents’ comments (negative — neutral — positive).
3. Improve and Iterate
The constructive feedback and intel teams receive help them identify areas for improvement. Adopting this type of active listening makes employees more committed to the process. After all, feedback is the foundation of a “Growth Mindset” and contributes to a positive business culture.
“Roti.express can change everything without changing the way you do meetings.”
The founders say, “Once the ROTI survey has been completed, 50% of the work remains to be done.” Here’s where teams can then brainstorm:
- What can we learn from the two hours we just spent together?
- What worked well? What didn’t work well?
- What should we do better next time?
Managers and meeting facilitators can leverage this bottom-up feedback to develop an action plan for “continuous improvement” and make “dynamic progress” as early as the next event.
The Founders Even Created a Roti-Bot To Automate the Process Further
The Roti-Bot fully automates the process of creating and distributing ROTI surveys to make life easier.
Users just have to add the [email protected] address as the last entry in their meeting agenda. As soon as it receives a meeting notification from a diary app (Outlook, Gmail, iCal, etc.), it “invites” itself to the meeting and sets up the survey automatically.
Roti-Bot can easily roll out surveys on different scales, whether within a team, across a department, or an entire firm. Then it prompts participants to complete the survey, reminds them if they forget to do so, and continues to work for recurring meetings.
So how does the Roti.express team accomplish all this?
The Roti.express Tech Stack and Journey with Meteor
Co-founder Guillaume Darbonne describes himself as a “Meteor evangelist 🙏.”
Before Meteor, he was a PHP developer for almost 10 years. A friend showed him MongoDB, and he was hooked on a JSON database. Then during the summer of 2015, Guillaume read “Discover Meteor” and tried a “little side project or two.” He admits, “My PHP days were soon over.”
Guillaume fully switched to Node.js in 2017 and never went back. He now says it’s “the only way of coding.”
“I love the easiness of Meteor to do complicated things like real-time or predictive UI.”
The Roti.express founders have been using Meteor “all the way since the beginning” of their startup journey. They began on Galaxy with MongoDB and Node.js. Now they’re trying to stay up to date running Blaze and Fomantic-UI (the fork of Semantic UI).
Their team also utilizes “a lot of npm packages.” According to them:
“The technical part was to make a Mailgun webhook to receive emails with ICS files to create surveys on the website. Thanks to the iCal and Formidable npm packages, it wasn’t that complicated. 😊”
Guillaume describes Meteor as “the perfect framework for a one-dev team,” even though he’s used it “in a multiple developers team” and scored equally impressive results.
[image source]
Roti.express also used Meteor Cloud, claiming it was “great” before they had to move their data hosting to France to comply with GDPR rules. They utilized a single front that could be scaled horizontally and vertically.
They customized their hosting setup through Cloud with “just a Meteor app, many npm and Meteor packages, and some API from Mailgun, Cloudinary, Stripe, and DNSimple.”
So What’s Next for Roti.express?
Guillaume revealed that he has been “playing with Svelte (Framoji.com hosted on Galaxy).” He says he finds it “fresh,” especially with Tailwind CSS and daisyUI. Guillaume admits that he has to “find some time to invest in the UI refactorization.”
Though he was hesitant to give a date when fans and users can expect this, he told us the team has “never been closer to this release. 😉”
Ready To See How Meteor Can Help Your Team Accomplish Greatness?
Roti.express built their feedback tool to make meetings more productive and satisfying for participants and companies all over the world using Meteor. Their mission to combat useless, ineffective Meeting Mania has become a huge success.
So what can Meteor help your team achieve?
If you’re ready to find out, join the community of more than 500k developers worldwide who trust and rely on Meteor today!
Roti.express Slays Unproductive Meetings with Meteor 🍖 was originally published in Meteor Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.