I am obviously in the majority in my thinking that a meeting without a laptop or Blackberry is a wasted meeting. How often have you been in a one-hour meeting where thirty or more minutes did not even pertain to you? You are supposed to just sit there, shut up and do nothing.

 

When you leave the meeting and your top customer wonders why you weren’t available for thirty minutes, you tell them it is because you were doing nothing for the last thirty minutes in a room full of people who spoke about things that didn’t really concern you.

 

If you are of the anti-productivity variety and your response is “You shouldn’t have been in the meeting in the first place” – you missed the point. Many times you need to be aware of the conversations around you so you can interject at the appropriate time. At other times your opinion is needed to make sure the meeting goes in the right direction.

 

Yes, it is annoying to have people with laptops in meetings, but if your organization thinks that laptopless meetings are the future, please point yourselves out so I can buy stock in your competition.

 

For an opposing and, IMHO, wrong opinion, please check out:

 

Adaptive Path Blog: My personal war against Crackberry

43 Folders: 43F Podcast: The Myth of Multi-tasking