Some meetings are a complete waste of time, but they're one way of bringing people's thinking closer together.

Meetings probably don't get everyone on the same page, but if they can get people reading from the same book, it was probably worthwhile.

As an example, in our organisation, we use meetings as a way of getting information from development to our sales/support teams and vice-versa (what features are selling, where are the pain-points).

Whoever is chairing the meeting will make efforts to remove people who don't need to be there e.g. if a meeting moves into technical discussions, we may ask the sales representatives if they want to go to avoid being bored.