Note: The Marketer’s Toolbox series teaches our readers about new technology we’re using (or experimenting with) that proves to be useful, productive, or just plain entertaining. As a marketer's secret weapon, Setup believes that the tools we use are vital to our success, thus, a marketer’s toolbox is truly one of our most important resources.

Everyone has mixed feelings about meetings –– on the one hand, they make the work day go by quickly, but, on the other, they take your attention from pressing work, and can be as exciting as watching paint dry.

While meetings aren't always welcome, they're often a necessity. You can better prepare by conducting some basic research on those attending the meeting, or be at risk for putting your foot in your mouth.

Enter Charlie, your new research assistant. Charlie integrates with your calendar and pulls information on everyone scheduled to join your meeting, and, an hour before the meeting, sends you a one-page cheat sheet with the most important stats for each participant.

Charlie gathers information from email interactions with each colleague, their social profiles, and any news articles that might mention them or their respective companies, all of which could be useful, especially for sales meetings.

To use Charlie most effectively, users should add every attendant's email address to their calendars to glean as much information as possible, and if your meeting participants aren't as socially or digitally active, Charlie's cheat sheet may not have much to offer.

The paid version of this tool can do everything the free version can, but also allows users to search news farther than six months ago, and uncover what interests (if any) they share with the people in their meetings.

Overall, this free automated tool requires little effort, will save you time, and give you an edge in meetings.

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