Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: The technographer's net connection

Author:Bernie DeKoven
Posted:3/4/1999; 8:48:24 AM
Topic:ADSL
Msg #:3543 (In response to 3525)
Prev/Next:3542 / 3544

I'll be upping my bandwidth by the end of next week, plugging in to DSL to accomplish at a spped of 384 up and down-stream. This was the best I could get and costs $100/month plus about $300 in installation. So much for my end. For the meeting participant, however, I really hate to make such a requirement. The easier the service is to access, the more effective it will be. I'd rather not have to wait for a couple more years before this technology is ubiquitous. In the mean time, I have been looking for alternatives, and am open to any that could work short-term. Phil Suh agreed to outline some intermediary application that might help speed things along. He thought that it might well be some kind of Shockwave thingy.

But let's go to the picture. I'm afraid that it's not going to be as short as we need it for this pass, and it is still only a rough approximation of what we need, but it should give us a good feel for the process.

Here I am, like you said, sitting comfortably in my home office, keyboard on my lap, headset on my, well, head. And there you are at your desk. Feet up. Looking at your computer. Talking on the phone.

You see a welcome to the meeting screen, showing the name of the participants, a list of topics we need to cover, a little Meeting Meter in the corner just to remind you that this is costing bucks real time.

I invite you to check out the list and think of any other items. We shmooze while we wait for everyone to join.

Then I ask if everyone is comfortable with the order of the agenda, or if we need to reprioritize in any way. I hear no dissenting voice, So we agree, and we're on the same page, and we're ready to tackle the first item.

I press my magic button, and now the screen shows ONLY the first item (yeah, I know, this is like a "hoist" and maybe we can't do it yet, but there's some way that I can get people to focus only on the item being discussed). I take input as I hear it, usually repating out loud what I'm typing as I type it. When the list is exhausted (I might have to put new items on the top of the list as they are entered, this is because currently when the screen refreshes it goes to the top of the window), I ask if anything needs to be prioritized, at least to the first several items. Fred wants to elaborate on the third item. Just to make sure that we have the time, I go back to the agenda and ask if people think we have time to go more deeply into Fred's issue. If not, I make a new category that I call "things to talk about next meeting" and paste a copy of the third item and type Fred's name next to it. I ask if we're ready to go to the second item. Tina thinks that we should go to the fourth item next and everyone agrees, so I move the fourth item to position number 2 and then go to the screen that contains only that item, and we continue with making a new list of responses.

About halfway through the meeting we shift to a vew of the whole outline, expanded. This is to check on progress. Tina thinks we left out an important agenda item. I suggest that we add this to our "things to talk about next meeting" category. Tina argues for it being the next thing to talk about. She seems to get agreement. I collapse the outline to show only the agenda items and ask if there are any items remaining that we could put off to next meeting. I poll the group. Tom is adamant about sticking with the agenda, so I add Tina's item to the "next meeting" category (consensus is key, one dissenter is all it takes). Tina asks that it be put first in that list, above Fred's item. Fred agrees. I do so. We go on to the fifth item.

About 15 minutes before the meeting is due to end, I go to the Action Items category (if there's not one, I make it). Here we record the actions, the people responsible, the lead, if there is any, and the time for the action to be completed. When we're finished, we handle this all through Mail to the Future.

Five minutes before the meeting ends, we again review the entire outline and add any comments or suggestions for how to make the next meeting better.

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