How to have a meeting that doesn't suck

Have a defined end-point for the meeting, and get there as soon as you can.

Take your own notes, by hand, on paper. You'll notice what's relevant to you and the act of writing helps you recall it.

Allow audience participation, it's not a lecture or a class, it's about collaboration. Someone else knows information that's relevant and they can't speak if you never leave space for other people's words.

Count at least seven seconds of silence when you ask a question. People start squirming at that much dead air and someone will fill it. Some people can tolerate more silence than others, watch for them and ask them questions directly.

If your meeting room is a fridge, people are too busy being cold to pay attention to what you say, and they probably hate you for keeping on talking.

Multiple-hour info-dump meetings will be forgotten by morning.  Multiple-hour meetings that are also cold will be remembered only as cold and too long.

Humans need regular bio breaks. Having to ask to be taken to the rest room as an adult, because you require a security badge to get back in and you're not handing those out to visitors, is humiliating. Don't be that company. If you can't get around the badge issue, schedule a break every couple of hours and get people up and moving.

If it's a meeting where people can phone in, make sure they can hear you over the phone. Repeat questions before answering them, and speak clearly and more loudly than usual.

For a video conference, have a dry run of the technology the day before to make sure everything is working OK. Do not make your meeting the first time you turn the video camera on.

If there's any way possible you can get everyone in the same room, do that.