Ideas for Free

Overall:

The basic topic, “Improving Communications in Face to Face (Meatspace) Meetings” presented challenges. It may be the topic with the most opportunity that we ever covered.

The group was small, about 15 people, with good participation by all. As mechanics worked out, no one was that interested in dinner and the lack of a babysitter sidelined Judith for much of the conversation.

Some Ideas Covered:

• Achut Reddy and others suggested improvements to the general calendaring and scheduling of meetings.
  1. A universal cut-and-paste function that would recognize calendars would be helpful. The idea would be that a calendar item could be highlighted text from an email, webpage, IM, Evite, or other source and be copied into a calendar in an intelligent manner.
  2. We need to easy share calendars by role (social, work, technology interest, politics, etc.), by group (kw-comm, our tribe, everyone we know), and social circle (1 degree of connection, 2 degrees, etc.)
  3. It would be nice to have a slick implementation to take over the world.
• Bubbles, Laura, and others pointed out the low-tech solutions for meeting at a convention, the Voodoo Board.
  1. See Wikipedia for a description of this low tech method involving push pins, index cards, and a bulletin board.
  2. The Voodoo Board allows easy message passing fast, simple, and cheap.
  3. The secondary social aspects, such as meeting people who are checking messages, make the board worthwhile.
• Joe, myself, and others talked about discovering interesting people.
  1. One of the modes or roles is to find interesting people, break the ice, and chat.
  2. Use of markings for common interest was discused. For example, Judith mentioned one gathering where badges held symbols for different fields of law. Also mentioned were Bujold’s “Betan Earings” and the Geek Code.
  3. I came up with the overboard technical solution: wearable LCD panels with near range communication. When you come close to someone else with a similar wearable tag, it might light up with “I’m also interested in Python” or “I also know Richard Threadgill”. I’ll write this idea up in detail soon.
• The core human problems still trump: calendars might be inundated by promoters; slimy people lie about existing relationships; etc. The nuances of communication are an opportunity to automate.