In Defense of Meetings
Someone once remarked that football (American football) has two of the worst characteristics of American society: violence and meetings. Maybe so, but people who live out parts of their lives in the virtual world of Second Life (SL) apparently go there for meetings. Isn’t that weird?
A recent survey of Second Life users reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus daily update today shows what’s really going on. New Media Consortium survey results show that two-thirds of SL users attend meetings in SL. Wow. So maybe meetings aren’t so bad.
Trying to get anything done on a college campus requires meetings. You can do lots of things by email, but building consensus on even mildly controversial topics requires human interactions: discourse and (with luck) nonlinear thinking emerging from having people in the room. If everyone had a web cam for an internet meeting, we might feel like we “looked ‘em in the eye.” Or maybe not. Try to read their body language over the web. Maybe this is why meetings work in SL (assuming avatars have body language).
Meetings without purpose are truly awful. Meetings with outcomes might be ok. From picking the color of the new carpet in the student center to settling on the requirements for transfer students, finding a reason for the meeting is key. And, some other business will get done by accident when people who need to talk about other things find themselves in the same time and place. Those incidental, accidental meetings often take two minutes and save an hour. So, have a meeting in your First Life (FL).
Dick Pratt is Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.
A recent survey of Second Life users reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus daily update today shows what’s really going on. New Media Consortium survey results show that two-thirds of SL users attend meetings in SL. Wow. So maybe meetings aren’t so bad.
Trying to get anything done on a college campus requires meetings. You can do lots of things by email, but building consensus on even mildly controversial topics requires human interactions: discourse and (with luck) nonlinear thinking emerging from having people in the room. If everyone had a web cam for an internet meeting, we might feel like we “looked ‘em in the eye.” Or maybe not. Try to read their body language over the web. Maybe this is why meetings work in SL (assuming avatars have body language).
Meetings without purpose are truly awful. Meetings with outcomes might be ok. From picking the color of the new carpet in the student center to settling on the requirements for transfer students, finding a reason for the meeting is key. And, some other business will get done by accident when people who need to talk about other things find themselves in the same time and place. Those incidental, accidental meetings often take two minutes and save an hour. So, have a meeting in your First Life (FL).
Dick Pratt is Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.
posted by Dick Pratt at
4:37 PM
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