Rands
Need to bring your laptop to a meeting? Think again…
As he says,
What are the things you are supposed to do to make a successful meeting? First hand: “Make sure everyone closes their laptop.” Yes. Full agreement from me. If you’re sitting in my meeting and your laptop is open, I promise, I swear — you are giving me half of your attention. Maybe less.
…
A bunch of people sitting in a meeting, staring at their laptops, is a fat meeting. The people sitting at their laptops have no incentive to change a thing because they’re lost in whatever has captured their interest on their laptops. This is a lazy meeting full of people who are ignoring the most important question: “How do we figure out how to never have this meeting again?” Even worse, an organization that lets this meeting exist is a rotting organization. It’s a company where it’s slowly becoming acceptable to sit there and do nothing.
I feel the same about live blogging: bring a laptop to a workshop I run and you had better have a good excuse/reason. As one of my favourite Jesuit priests used to say to me, ‘an explanation is not an excuse’.
