While intended to be a productivity measure, the practice of barring laptops from meetings may have the opposite effect when the meeting has ended. The San Jose Mercury News and the Los Angeles Times ran stories earlier this year on the phenomenon of the “topless meeting”. While this sounds like lunch at Hooters, it’s actually the practice of barring laptops, along with PDA’s and cellphones from meetings, in an attempt to make meetings shorter and more productive.
Being that I’m at my wit’s end with endless meetings at work, I’m willing to give this a shot. My first reaction is that it’s not going to work well for me. I’m a fairly good notetaker, and I can type much faster (not to mention be much more legible) with a laptop than I can writing on a piece of paper. But I’m going to get behind it 100%. With that, here are my concerns about topless meetings:
- Taking notes by hand takes longer and is more error-prone
- It takes longer to transcribe the notes afterward.
- Unable to post notes immediately after the meeting. This could result in notes being lost and not disseminated. This even applies to the practice of not taking minutes, and only capturing “next actions” on the agenda.
I agree 100% with the PDA/phone ban. I don’t care if phones are brought to the meeting, but the must be either off, or completely silent. Completely silent does not mean ‘vibrate’. I can hear most phones vibrating, and find it distracting. What’s worse is when people bring phones on vibrate mode in their pocket to a meeting, and just ignore the vibrating. Personal pleasuring aside, I find it not just annoying, but rude. If you find yourself in a position where you cannot spare 30 minutes away from your phone or PDA, then you shouldn’t be going to the meeting (and this comes from a self-confessed Crackberry addict).
Tags: meeting