All the meetings I do are voluntary. Most of the people who attend work with the problems in some way.
Your time is incredibly valuable. If you're sitting there for 30 minutes while someone reads your memo, if you're getting everyone together in one place to read your memo, with all that implies for their schedules, then that's a waste of a lot of extremely important time for a lot of people.
Meetings are for discussions that you can only have with everyone together. They're so that people who don't understand something can ask you questions, or so that you can work with others who do understand the problems. Not for reading groups.
While this is totally true (what's the point in gathering people to get them to read instead of talk?) this is just how it works in most places. Ask people to read something before a meeting: 80% show up without having read, no matter how easy to read or important the paper is.
Your time is incredibly valuable. If you're sitting there for 30 minutes while someone reads your memo, if you're getting everyone together in one place to read your memo, with all that implies for their schedules, then that's a waste of a lot of extremely important time for a lot of people.
Meetings are for discussions that you can only have with everyone together. They're so that people who don't understand something can ask you questions, or so that you can work with others who do understand the problems. Not for reading groups.