Here are patterns that facilitate running effective meetings:

* BrainStorm
* ViolentAgreement (an anti-pattern)
* MakeItVisible
* NegativeConsensus
* ObserverReviews
* RolePlay
* RomanEvaluation?
* SixThinkingHats
* StandUpMeeting
* ThereMustBeFood
* PairPresenting

TheTeamHandbook lists a couple others:

* MultiVoting
* NominalGroupingTechnique

(there are literally hundreds of these if you wish to include creativity techniques for problem definition, possible solution discovery and implementation planning. There's a book by Van Gundy that has about 180+ of them).

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How about not having so many meetings? Some sort of wiki-like discussion system may be more effective. But managers don't seem to like those kind of things. Meetings are huge TimeSink''''''s. You cannot stop and ponder key issues, but have to deliver instant sound-byte solutions. 

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I think the nature of meetings is often misunderstood. People use them as methods for decision-making, in which they suck deeply. The only good purposes of meetings I know of are quickly informing a group of people about others' activities, and quickly gathering ideas / opinions about some questions. If it gets much outside that, there will be somebody who'll get frustrated. -- PanuKalliokoski