Do you use opt-in or opt-out? That is, do you agree to meet unless one or more of the group calls and says they can’t make it, or do you agree only if enough of you call and say they can make it?
With opt-out each person has insufficient incentive to make the call. If she has already decided not to go, courtesy is the only motive for informing the others. Moreover even if she is courteous, since the call could kill the meeting, if she is not 100% sure she can’t make it, she has a private incentive to wait until the last minute to make the call, just in case.
With opt-in each person has stronger incentives to try to coordinate. Because if I want to go to the meeting and I don’t make the call it might not happen.
So, returning to the question in the title, it all depends on what you want. Opt-out minimizes the chance that the meeting will be cancelled, but probably also at the expense of minimizing attendance.
Cheap Talk 
5 comments
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February 23, 2010 at 10:29 am
Alicia
Shouldn’t it depend on the type of meeting. Some meetings nobody wants to attend others everyone would like to attend. So if it boring beuracratic stuff or interesting speaker? Nobody volunteers to opt in for boring meetings so you need to make them opt out only.
Interesting meetings you can have as opt in as demand to attend is stronger.
February 23, 2010 at 11:40 am
jeff
yes, your objective should depend on whether you want a meeting or not and also how many people you want there conditional on the meeting happening
February 23, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Leigh Caldwell
Since you put ‘game theory’ in the tags, I would hope that for most of your meetings, the incentives of repeated play would dominate those of the one-time game. If I didn’t turn up to meetings I’d expect swift retribution, not to mention tit-for-tat tactics on the ones that I want other people to come to!
February 23, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Nick M
What I always try to do with people is minimize work by figuring out the most likely case and we all assume that’s the default.
February 25, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Paul from TV
It also depends on the costs of coordinating relative to preferences (I’m thinking primarily about timing here). If there are high coordination costs, then opt-out is best since it gives you some focal point. If preferences are high, then opt-in is better.