This article describes Parliota, a new meeting management software which uses cryptocurrency payments to keep the focus on creating value and using time economically.

Meetings are essential for efficient collaboration and at the same time are expensive. Furthermore, not every person is equally interested in the topics discussed, especially for larger meetings. Parliota aims at aligning incentives using cryptocurrency payments between the participants.

The meeting agenda is established jointly by all meeting participants to get maximal buy-in from all participants.

How Parliota Works

The meeting owner creates a new meeting and sets the title, the description and the start and end time. Ideally, this happens a few days before the meeting start. The encrypted data is stored in the IOTA tangle and is all linked to a secret seed that only the meeting owner knows. Next, she invites the participants by sharing a link to join the meeting.

Each participant is now entitled to post agenda items that he or she believes are essential for the meeting.

The core element of Parliota is the next step: In the time before the meeting starts each participant funds the most important items by sending IOTAs. Agenda items that are well-funded end up at the top of the list and also receive more time in proportion to the funding.

At the end of the meeting, the funds are paid back to the participants. Currently, the distribution is controlled by the meeting host who can accept Parliota's suggestions or set her own. The goal in this step is to reward pro-active and targeted participation.

How Parliota Changes Meetings

As Parliota is brand new, we don't know how it will be used or even if it will to be used. This is our ideal scenario:

Participants take more ownership of the meeting instead of leaving it all to the host.

The most important agenda items receive the most time.

Participants get one of two things: either their favorite topic gets most of the time, or they get a bigger payout because their favorite was out-bid.

Meetings that accrue below-threshold funds are canceled, re-scheduled, or re-defined (thresholds to be established by the teams)

Participants are more pro-active even if their favorite items don't make the cut or receive very little time.

The time-allowance for each agenda item is honored more diligently and more meetings end on time.

Technical Innovations

Where Does Parliota Store The Data?

Concerning data storage, Parliota works differently from the typical web app. Firstly, the entire application logic is executed in the browser. Secondly, there is no Parliota cloud server that stores data. Instead, Parliota stores all data, in encrypted form, in the IOTA tangle. To our users, this form of storage offers immutability, censorship resistance, and very high availability as there are thousands of hosts around the world to replicate the data.

How Does Parliota Identify The Host and The Participants?

The IOTA tangle is a permission-less data and cryptocurrency network. Everybody can use the IOTA tangle at zero fees. To create a private data space the owner needs to create a secure IOTA seed and enter it to Parliota during meeting creation. Because nobody else can generate the same seed, this space is yours forever.

In the invitation link, the host shares the meeting address (but not the seed) with all the participants. During sign-up, the participants specify a new IOTA address that will receive their payout at the end of the meeting and are thus identified by a combination of the meeting address and their payout address.

At no stage, anyone needs to disclose his or her identity or sign in.

Why Does Parliota Use IOTA

These are the reasons why we have chosen the IOTA tangle to store our data and execute our payment:

IOTA provides fee-less transactions facilitating both micro-payments and zero-value data transactions. The absence of fees means that there are no constraints as to how small a payment can be.

IOTA allows the storage of data in the tangle.

IOTA is designed to scale, so we expect better rather than worse performance when the usage of the IOTA network grows.

Getting Started and Staying In Touch

Where Can I Obtain and Store IOTAs?

We assume that most of the people participating in this alpha test already possess IOTAs. To test the functionality of Parliota, you don't need significant funds. Visit this IOTA page for information about how you can buy and store IOTAs.