Rambling Rhodes

Meeting Me, Face-to-Face

I’ve attended probably hundreds of meetings during my years as a cog in the national workforce. I’ve attended weekly meetings, and monthly meeting, and special meetings and secret meetings. I’ve attended meetings where we discussed what we should meet about in our next meeting, and I’ve attended meetings where no one seemed to have the slightest idea why we were even meeting.

My default behavior when attending roughly 90 percent of the meetings of the past, has traditionally revolved around coming up with innovative ways to keep from falling asleep. Generally, this has involved playing with my pens, or writing down notes to myself, such as “Remember: You’re pretty awesome,” or “The sound of one hand clapping would be pretty quiet,” or “Even if I were President of the United States, I’d probably still be in a meeting right now.”

For me, meetings have always seemed more like a waste of time than time well spent. I could probably count on one hand the number of meetings I’ve attended that actually seemed to accomplish anything. Granted, I’ve basically been a minor player when it comes to the vast majority of the meetings I’ve attended, so my opinion of years of accrued meeting time is skewed towards the negative spectrum, to put it mildly.

This week, however, marked a turning point in my meeting experience. Up until this week I was used to meetings where I sat around a table with co-workers, talking into a speaker phone to other remote co-workers who basically couldn’t hear us because of the terrible connection, so everyone had to repeat everything they said roughly 20 times, thus ensuring everyone could clearly hear whatever useless information was being uttered.

This week threw all my previous meeting experiences for a loop, as I sat in on my first-ever video conference meeting. For the first time, I was able to see co-workers attending the meeting from across the nation. . . as well as a separate screen devoted to those of us on-site. Which. . .

It’s hard to explain, exactly, what it was like to be sitting in on a meeting where I could actually see myself sitting in on a meeting. It was like being confronted by nearly a decade of meetings and seeing exactly what a fidgety, restless and entirely bored person I’ve been all these years.

Of course, since the meeting dealt with items largely unconnected with me, I spent most of the time obsessing over the behavior of my video doppelganger, which is to say I tried to tone down and tame all my years of habit-hardened mannerisms. I tried not to fidget with my pen but, failing that, I opted to put it away so it wouldn’t tempt me.

That, of course, just left me with a pair of hands with nothing to do, so they seemed to automatically go to my face, so I spent all sorts of time with my chin in my palm, or with a thoughtful-looking thumb under the chin, with an index finger on my cheek. When I caught a glimpse of myself on the big screen, I thought the pose made me look far too engaged in the conversation and put me at risk of possibly being called on for input, so I tried folding my hands on the desk in front of me, which I decided made me look alert, but not overly so.

I found myself hoping someone at one of the remote locations would start speaking so I’d have a reason to look up at the screen and more adequately critique myself. My back posture needed a slight tweaking, I found, and I discovered I spent a lot of time chewing my lower lip, which needs to stop.

All in all, I think video conferencing may be my unexpected ticket to self-improvement. As an added bonus, I’ve finally discovered a valuable use for meetings.

Posted by Ryan at July 24, 2008 02:58 PM | TrackBack