Month: February 2010

The internal meeting clock

Dave

I had a bunch of meetings today. I have a bunch of meetings most every day. Most of them are an hour long. Some of them are 30 minutes long. One is 15 minutes long. Here’s the funny thing about them:

They all last exactly as long as they are scheduled to last.

Maybe once every two weeks, I’ll be in an hour-long meeting that wraps up early, and people always seem surprised and delighted, kind of like the feeling you get when your purchase is rung up on the cash register and comes to an even number, like $16.00. Sure, it’s not a huge mystery, but the novelty of it gives you a fun little thrill nonetheless.

Why is it that meetings always last exactly as long as they’re scheduled? Is it that the organizer always does a perfect job estimating exactly the time needed? I don’t think anybody believes that. I think it’s just that we have an innate ability to expand to fill the allotted time.

Somebody, maybe it was Ross Perot, advised that you should hold all meetings standing up. People will be less comfortable and more likely to get to the point. Of course, that’s the kind of thing a billionaire CEO can get away with. I doubt people would react very well at my next meeting if I told them all to get out of their chairs.

What would happen if we just started making 30 minutes the default? Would people innately compress, hold extraneous thoughts and avoid tangential discussions?

It’s worth a try.

Google Buzz is keeping me awake

Dave

A follow-on to my previous post, that’s going to make me sound even more obsessive, but I’m okay with that. I’ve been checking to see if my Google account is enabled for Buzz yet. It’s not, but I can get to it on my iPhone. So far it looks pretty cool; Twitter-like features and a fairly tidy interface that looks like a lot of other Google mobile apps. I found I was already following seven people “how, exactly?” and nine people are already following me, including a couple of people from my contact list and a few I’ve never heard of, who seem to be from a country far, far away.

Turns out one of the folks following me has been busy today and is following 147 people, many of whom I know, so in classic Twitter fashion I was able to build my follower list by poaching his.

Even better “and apropos of my earlier identity crisis” you can search people by their full names, and their full names are displayed, not their Gmail usernames. So far so good, it looks like I’m “David B. Thomas” on Google Buzz, and I might be getting to sleep before midnight.

Then I scroll down the other guy’s follower list. 146 people, all shown in the Firstname Lastname format. And me, shown as “Thomas, David B.”

Should be fun trying to figure that one out.