[ahtihn]

> After all, if everyone sent out their emails, so to speak, what would be left for the meeting?

One thing I've learned is that a lot of people simply don't read emails.

You can send out all the status emails you want, no one is going to read them unless it's directly related to their own work.

Short, frequent status meetings ensure that people are actually aware of the status and gives them a chance of unblocking you if they can.

[randomdata]

You are right that people won't pay attention to anything that isn't already of interest to them, but the medium of exchange makes no difference there.

In fact, there was once advocacy towards a style of meeting (oft called a "standup") where you explicitly called upon participants to give their status update because it was recognized that they wouldn't be paying attention and needed prompting to snap them back, although this has largely fallen out of favour as we realized that only kept their attention for the length of their update and didn't achieve the desired effect.