The Laptop Herring - worth a read

I'm one of those people that used to bring laptops to meetings and ended up weening myself off the process because I was missing important parts of the meeting. Unfortunately it wasn't a conscious action on my behalf, because if it had been I would have instituted a lap ban a long time ago, I probably would've killed off a weekly production meeting as well... Anyway this post, by Michael Lopp is worth reading for anyone that goes to meetings... and that is nearly all of us at some point or another.

Here's the start of it to wet your appetite...

I recently spoke at Yahoo! about the book, and, for this presentation, I adapted the Agenda Detection and Meeting Creatures chapters into a piece about how I assess agendas and people in the first 10 minutes of any meeting.

Early on in the presentation, I asked the audience, "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.

The Yahoos couldn't drop the topic. In Q&A, the laptop question came up. In the post-presentation mingle it came up again. Everyone wanted to know if there was a situation where it was OK to whip out the laptop.

My answer, over and over again, is "No."

Now, this is religion and not reality because it's likely I'll bring my laptop to a couple of meetings this week, but I am ultimately fucking up by doing this. Here's why.