Can you beat the other attendees into the room? If so, do some pre-meeting room reading. Preview the room’s layout — its size, shape and acoustics in particular. Choose a seat where you’ll be seen and heard by a majority of attendees. Then position yourself as the unofficial greeter so you can begin learning names, titles and faces.

Arriving first presents opportunities to uncover group dynamics. “You can read body language and mood before the ‘group politics’ begins and get a baseline of where each person is before the meeting starts,” says Dave Gambrill, a leadership consultant and executive coach at Gambrill Communications. “Does someone get agitated when someone else arrives?”

via Successful Meetings: How To Read the Room | Life Reimagined for Work.