Laptops in Meetings a Double-Edged Sword
You’re in a meeting with your laptop: Are you checking email or paying attention to the speaker? Um, can you repeat the question? you ask. You need your lappie to look up information and take notes, right? But a lot of people—and you know who you are—use the computer to check sports scores and IM during the painful office get-togethers. So what say you, lifehackers—do laptops in meetings help you get more out of it or escape the boredom? And before you answer, watch out—your meeting moderator’s giving you the evil eye.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
Laptops are great when you need to reference large, or many documents and you don’t want to lug a small forest worth of paper into a meeting. Courtesy dictates that you should maintain as much eye contact as possible with the moderator or speaker to show you aren’t just catching up on emails instead of participating (not easy for those of us that can’t touch type I know). I’ve noticed from personal experience that having someone who stays buried behind the lappy screen or whose eyes never leave it means that they are using your meeting to do other work, and that is what really makes me feel like ramming their laptop right up their rear USB port.
That line about the “rear USB port” made me giggle, thanks for that. :)