The only 3 reasons to have a meeting

I, as well as most of you, feel as though we have meetings at work far too often so I'm putting down on "paper" my views on the subject. I recently read this article on the 3 reasons to have a meeting, my views are close to this but I'll extend and change that a wee bit. Drumroll please...

1. To provide information. This is one where I'll be even more specific than the other article, this isn't just a status update meeting, do those over email for god's sake. Don't make me sit there and watch PowerPoint slides of your stats and KPI's, email those out. The rule in my framework is this, if it's to a large group of people, say a department and you're sharing strategy this is a good meeting but please make it interactive. The other attribute is your proximity in the communication continuum, the closer you are to bad news the closer to being in person you should be. Meetings to develop projects, tactics or strategy often fall in this category.
2. To make decisions. This really should be #1, we can actually debate about whether or not #1 is even needed but this one actually is. Debates and quagmire happen over emails as they're async, fire and forget, processes and always lose inflection and tone. When you need to make a decision, especially a shared one, do it together. This is one of those that doesn't always need to be in-person, it can be done via a conference call.
3. To gather group feedback. This is one of the most important meetings you can have, things like lessons learned, brainstorming, working groups and such are far more effective using in-person meeting formats.