Sunday, June 15, 2008

Virtual Meetings

At a recent meeting someone made the point that virtual meetings were OK but if we really wanted the buzz of creativity we had to have a face-to face meeting and look each other in the eye?

I find trading ideas by email quite stimulating and certainly no worse than looking people in the eye. It also means a brainstorm can happen without us all being in the same place at the same time but, say, over a day when we are all up and down from our desks or out of our offices for chunks of time.

Anyone else?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes, but that's because you're a words person.
People like me who are visual people really need to see people's faces to see their responses and what they think of our ideas. Also whether they have understood or misunderstood what my not too eloquent words have conveyed.
That's why I don't really like discussing ideas on the phone and often get misunderstood in emails.
Pauline

Mike Peatman said...

I think there's an immediacy about being with people - body language, looks, expressions, jokes. Doing stuff online, or my email is a different genre - it can come up with good stuff, but it's different.

We use video-conferencing a fair bit, but even that's not the same as being in the same room. Saves a lot of travel and petrol, though!

Caroline Too said...

maybe I'm a words person too but I find writing helps to open up my thinking

words and sentences have a way of leading me 'off piste', so to speak, and I find myself thinking thoughts I did realise I could...

emails, with the permission to write differently, non-grammatically and swifly can really help...

but there are also times when I need to see the whites of, for example, students' eyes so as to judge whether they really are struggling or if they are just wanting a quick answer.

Kathryn said...

I think I'm a both/and person...With people I don't know that well, where self confidence can be an issue, I'll actually have the courage to share thoughts and ideas by email while I might just sit and listen in a face to face group encounter...otoh, there's nothing like the buzz of cumulative ideas and inspirations.

Anonymous said...

I find non-verbal signals hard to read with any degree of accurancy, so I prefer written forms of communication - there's no distracting arm-waving, or smiling-while-criticising to confuse me...