Laptops up!
Scoble: “This is the first conference I’ve been to where almost every single attendee is using a computer.”
After this, I dislike even more the current practice at meetings where the owner/presenter asks everyone to close their laptops in order to discourage email and encourage participation. If your content is so boring and irrelevant that people have to be scolded or embarrassed into paying attention, then you have a fundamental problem.
At Gnomedex, every single person has a laptop out and is typing away, and yet the interaction is better than any “closed laptop” meeting I’ve been to. Make your content compelling and people will pay attention.
Especially in an age of OneNote, StickyBrain, and blogging, closed laptop meetings signal a failure on the part of the meeting presenter both to trust and engage the attendees.
Technorati Tags: gnomedex
No Comments
I’ve been at meetings were people were doing all they could just to stay awake. It’s not clear to me that the presenter at those meetings would have anything to lose by people doing email. I mean really what is the difference between sleeping and email in terms of paying attention. People who are presenting need to make sure they are presenting what people need in a way that keeps them involved.
I love your post and couldn’t agree more. Don’t you love when you have a divisional meeting at the executive conference center and they turn off wireless so people will pay attention. How about letting us decide if real work on our laptops is more important than some boring talk.