Intro d u ct io n Meetings, both face to face, and phone meetings, are an important speech event in our culture, and represent one of the most common ways in which collaborative work is accomplished. This paper explores one important aspect of the way meetings are constructed by participants: the resources available to participants to constitute the topics of their agenda, achieve coordination on topics and to move from one topic to the next. This framework is currently being applied to the

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... tion of understanding the differences between agenda management in different technological conditions: face to face, phone, and with enhanced communications software. The question of how agendas are managed is important because it allows us to make a bridge between the larger level speech event of the meeting, and the micro-level details of the exchange of turns within this speech event. That is, the business meeting is a recognizable speech event for middle class Americans; the participants, as well as other members of the culture could easily describe these stretches of speech as meetings.