Has anyone ever tried managing meetings as a task?

What type of process configuration is being used for the project area/s?  What type of process is the sldc using in general?

This type of time tracking doesn't fit well into an RTC project area that is based on the agile/scrum (from a process and tool perspective).  However, if you have to track this type of activity you can have each resource maintain a general meeting task for a given iteration across the duration of the release and log time spent in meetings against it.  Use estimate to set the target of the total time the user thinks they spend in meetings during the iteration.  They can then log against the estimate through the Time Remaining attribute, below the Estimate.  They begin the sprint/iteration put the task in progress and update the time remaining daily.  This will provide some metrics for management or leads as to how much time (over a period of time) is spent across a team and individually on meetings.

To accelerate creation and use consistent task headlines/summaries use work item templates to prefill the tasks with canned or reused information.  Each individual will own the task and the query/report/plan views will be able to show progress and if related to a parent story that has all team members meeting tasks related to it.

If your using the formal process configuration or a hybrid where the formal process pieces have been added to a modified process configuration, you should have all the incremental time tracking capability the managers need.  You'll be able to create a time code for meetings and off each meeting task (still use the work item template to create) users can log daily time spent on meetings.

In either process approach you should be able to meet their needs.  I would argue that any metrics pulled from either approach will be as suspect as the same info pulled from granular time tracking systems.  Resources will always fudge those numbers in their favor.  Just my two cents......

Hope this helps.