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Best two hour meeting of my week.
"The tortured faces expression out aloud; And life's little ironies seem so obvious now;
Your cashed in cheques have placed the payments down; And there's a line of buses all wait to take you out...
But it's a harmony in my head" - The Buzzcocks: Harmony in my Head
I'm cheating...somewhat. I don't have the karmic iPod with me because I'm in a meeting and wearing it would be rude. That said, I do have tunes going through my mind in the background, and yes, as I ponder that the Buzzcocks come to the foreground. Still, tunes seem to be driving the blog...but since the tunes are inside my head, we don't have the same external influence. Does this invalidate the blog? Probably (in as much as so far I've been channeling the spirit of the 70's and 80's via my iPod), but it's not going to stop me ;-)
A two hour meeting. I'm in a two hour meeting. As in one hour less than the ill fated tour that landed Gilligan and company on a deserted island.
This is an improvement. It's the consolidation of three separate one hour meetings, all providing related statuses to overlapping teams. That's net less one meeting hour. Per week. And there's food. I like food. I eat several times a day. I like donuts in particular...but that's getting off topic.
So, sitting in this meeting, I can't help but think how much of this could be communicated more efficiently via some other means. A wiki to build concensus on some of the items being discussed. A series of internal linked blogs perhaps...to preserve the timeline of discussions and stauts updates. Heck, even boring old email thread could circulate updates and threads of dialogues. I mean, physical meetings are so 80's. This is a debate so old to be cliche.
This is a decently run meeting. It's a collapse of several others. There was an agenda. Minutes and actions are being taken. And there's the aforementioned food.
Right there...several people exchanged glances and nodded. That's extremely compressed data exchange. A nod (or wink) in such setting has been described as the most effiicient data exchange, characterising it as a single bit, with shared context and background and timing making it meaningful. But is the body language and facial expression details more accurately a lot of out of band information? I've been witnessinga movement backtowards more direct meetings, stated to be for immediacy, but in reality it's about the additional data exchange that's not verbal or textual. Yet I've never seen a nod or a wink in minutes ;-)
Interestingly, I've been Instant Messaging with the person sitting across the room in the same meeting. I suspect this is rude. In honesty, I know this is rude. I can't help myself (please don't tell my mom...I'm normally a very polite person). It is, however, discrete. Out of band signalling...selectively sharing context with a subset of the participants.
Which brings me back to the face to face meeting versus online collaboration tools debate. Maybe that's a fundamentally wrong way of looking at things. Perhaps the real discussion should be how to bring various forms of out of band communications to enhance 'live' communications. By appropriately sharing context information (or just background reference material) with those that need it, we can greatly enhance the signal to noise ratio of the dialogue. It's not rude, it's efficient.
"I know that woman made me understand; It takes a woman's love to make a man" - Kanasas: It takes a woman's love to make a man
Happy Valentine's Day.
yhzmurphy at 1:14:00 PM EST Blog about this entry |
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So, since you mention the word "live", isn't there some irony in Microsoft's name for their new platform?
2/15/06 8:01 AM