I would have agreed, but the reporter shares multiple anecdotes where that's not the case. Most crazily, the person she was meant to be interviewing sent an AI note taker in his place, very much not a presentation and she just sat alone with the AI until it became clear he was a no-show. I don't get the thought process there, just cancel the interview if you're not going to show up.

In general I think people need to be more comfortable both calling out useless meetings, and calling out people who are making meetings useless by not being engaged or "multi-tasking" (a.k.a. not paying attention). When I facilitate meetings if I see people aren't paying attention or it's very low engagement, I call it out and ask honestly if people think the meeting is worth their time. The first time people hear that they think I'm just being passive-aggressive, but colleagues who know me well know they can be honest and if the meeting isn't valuable we can stop and in the future we'll either have a better agenda/facilitation, do it async, or not do it at all. Even if the meeting would have value if people were engaged, if I fail to get people's attention then it becomes useless and I would rather not waste my or anyone else's time.