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IBM Wants Patent For Lotus Notes-Free Meetings
theodp writes "Over at IBM, the Lotus Notes team has 'invented' preventing the use of their own product during meetings. Self-described patent reformer Big Blue has asked the USPTO for a patent covering Suppressing De-Focusing Activities During Selective Scheduled Meetings by forcing meeting attendees to 'submit to the computing system suspension requirements.' What's next — a patent for Verizon for blocking cellphone usage during movies?"
Do you speak it?
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
This is the dumbest fucking slashdot posting I have ever read.
"What's next - a patent for Verizon for blocking cellphone usage during movies?"
DON'T. GIVE THEM. IDEAS.
3M Patents sticky notes for use when lotus notes has been restricted... :-P
But this seems pretty tepid. Software designed to enforce situation-specific social norms is not at all new(SMART's somewhat creepily named "Synchroneyes" is one that has been commercially available for a long while now, MS's "digital manners" application came out a while back, and I've run into a number of browser plugins and other utility programs designed to stop timewasting).
The only novelty, and it is a slender one, is using a calendar event as a stimulus, rather than time or location or some other variable.
If IBM patents meeting without Lotus Notes, and doesn't license it, then that means everyone will have to have meetings WITH Lotus Notes! Most companies don't have it, so now they'll need to license it.
...and here I thought that IBM's crappy marketing practices were primarily responsible for no one using Notes during meetings. Well, that or the fact that the client hasn't changed significantly since the dot com era.
The app seems like a verbose way of saying that the calendar system shuts down access to other apps during the meeting; which is a technical solution to a social problem (people banging away on laptop keyboards during meetings)
One part of IBM's strategy for patent reform has been to build as large a patent library as possible, but enforce only (what they see as) legitimate innovation while using the rest only to club patent trolls. While I have no objection to anti-software patent advocates, or full-blown anti-imaginary property advocates, insinuating that IBM is guilt of misrepresentation or hypocrisy with this filing is absurd.
IBM has been attempting to get patents for some of the craziest things lately, and I wonder how many of these were actually accepted. Are they trying an easy way to beef up their patent portfolio, for defensive tactics, to keep up the yearly count or simply to prove how broken the system is? In the meantime, they will ensure they keep getting noticed by Slashdot ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It's a great strategy for undermining the efficiency of companies everywhere!
I don't know of any existing products with this functionality. So they wrote it up first, and you're bitching because you lack the creativity or ambition to do so yourself.
For prior art, check out any MMORPG with a parental control feature, or firewalls with time lock options. Maybe there's a sliver of innovation in that it custom schedules it based on when your meetings are, but that's pretty thin.
Oh, you don't like software patents? So competitive corporations should just throw in the towel and abandon patents that are allowed in our current system?
No, my plan is to bitch about them to draw attention to how broken the system is until we have the support to legislate them away. Until then I support companies' rights to keep trying for these things, and the people's rights to mock them for it.
It's great for creativity really. Imagine the proliferation of patents that are based on not doing something. I didn't eat at McDonald's today - can I patent that? Can I patent not using Windows?? This is fun. But as someone else noted above, IBM's true genius is the catch-22 ... if you choose to use Notes, you're paying for the privilege. IBM figured out a way to still make you pay when you choose not to use Notes.
This is the tip of the iceberg. If IBM ever invents a method of stopping people reading slashdot then we're screwed.
called "cranio-rectal inversion".
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Want people's attention during your meeting? Try a few basic things:
Start on time.
Get to the point when speaking.
Keep the discussion on topic.
If the meeting is more than an hour, have a 5 minute break for email and bathroom.
Never read your slides to the audience.
Then again, I dislike speaking in front of people, even if I do it well, so I'm quick myself.
...would be to send a robot killer back in time to take out Ray Ozzie's mother before he was born.
I have been riding a downhill slope of enterprise email systems for the last half decade.
First I started working at a Novell shop, Groupwise was of course the flavor. Well, I thought
it was lacking in usability and features, until we ditched it for a worldwide Lotus Notes
enterprise solution. What groupwise lacks in features and usability, Notes takes and twists
into infinitely complex knots, lashings, and tangles. Preferences? We got em all over the
fucking place. Location preferences, user preferences, security prefernces, address book
preferences, all dispersed throughout different menus and buttons. There is no way
a non admin could properly configure this evil bitch. Want to archive some email and get
it out of your active database (oh yes, this is not a mail file, this is a full fledged encrypted
domino database, bitches) ? Ok, follow this simple 10 step process! To change the font size, you
have to leave the application and edit a preference file by hand on Macs. We had to send out
a small magazine to explain how to use an html signature. The default browser when you
install? Notes browser. Ugh.
I have come up with a fairly plausible theory that Lotus Notes is a conspiracy
of complexity to keep huge numbers of IBM engineers and testers, as well as external
Notes administrators in business. Witness the ease of use of modern email.
We have well over 20 Notes admins for our global enterprise. REALLY?
music lover since 1969
The only winning move is not to play.
~Philly
Hey, my grade-school teacher had prior art on that one, from "No chewing gum in school" to "There'll be a test at the end."
This patent is just more bullshit. Didn't IBM get the memo on "in re Bilski"? Can't patent something that's not a product ...
This looks like like a personnel management problem than a technological problem, and is easier and probably cheaper to approach it by traditional means. If one of your subordinates is goofing off with his email and not paying attention to you, tell him to stop. If he doesn't, call HR and determine the appropriate level of censure.
Notermitator?
music lover since 1969
The good posts always come when I don't have mod points. Slashdot would be a much better place, if the phrase "My mocking something does not necessarily mean that I support the government suppressing it," were half as popular as that damned Franklin quote about security and liberty.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Indeed. We seem to be evolving a culture where we try to solve every problem with technology. Sometimes technology is not the answer. Sometimes you have to realise that technology is not curing the problem, it is just solving a symptom. And like most diseases, it will simply evolve around your attempt.
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
At first glance this seems absurd. Then you read the patent and realize that it isn't a patent saying anyone who doesn't use lotus notes must pay. Instead it says if a system is used to block lotus notes it would be in violation of the patent unless it was big blues system. Seems legit to me.
Of course I typically have a minimum of three computers on my desk, and none have Lotus Notes. If I must bang on my keyboard however I use mute. Being the tech means I often have to bang on a keyboard for a while to enable others to get into the meeting.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Where's the whatcouldgowrong tag?
Seriously, it isn't like that this can't be used for Orwellian substitution/censor-NO CARRIER - CONNECT - DISREGARD THAT I THINK THIS IS A GREAT IDEA
Do nothing. Schedule meetings all day. Prevents termination by Lotus Notes. Works for middle management!
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Newsflash: Woman patents rejecting a guy's advances. The technology, dubbed Method and Apparatus to Block Male Advances, is patented under U.S. Patent #562434645779680584735235644. What that means for us geeks is that if you ask out a girl, she must say "Yes" unless she licenses that patent.
..no, there is too much. let me sum up...
1. During meetings, people like to do other work. Shocking, I know.
2. At IBM - as in many shops that use Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime - a large amount of the things people work on, are done using these tools.
3. IBM's customers, in some cases, want to prevent people from doing non-meeting things during their meetings. Probably, this is more about meetings using shared screens and browser based meeting software -- prevent it from being backgrounded.
4. IBM Software people are expected to generate patents on a fairly regular basis.
So, IBM developers come up with a feature for some customer or other, it seems unique so they patent it. There are thousands of these silly patents going on all the time.
btw: This is not a pro-notes or anti-notes post. If you hate notes, nobody cares. If you like notes, that's great but still not at all germane to the current topic.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
This is a great idea if your some draconian control freak company. If your primary line of business is trying to stifle innovation and make your employees miserable please by all means get this software installed on your obsolete mail system.
The concept of a "mail server" is slowly becoming obsolete. With Google Apps a company can do exactly what they did with Lotus Notes or Exchange just as securely for a fraction of the cost. Why do so many people still run mail servers and their own BES servers? They have blinders on. The refuse to see the world has changed and left them in the dust. All the normal functionality of mail and even custom written apps for e-mail and mobile devices can be done through Lotus Notes. Except for those crummy little Notes Databases that I avoided using like the plague because they sucked so bad and had outdated information in them. BTW Ex IBM employee here!
I would love it if my company installed this software on my Macbook. During meetings I am quietly tapping away and working while listening in the meeting. I would be more than happy to give up my shell and stare blankly at the meeting presenters and take notes on my legal pad. And it would cost my company 2 to 3 times as much to do the same amount of work as during meetings which often don't pertain directly to me I would be getting paid to do nothing!
An even better idea would be to take away most computer users ability to multitask all together. We should have green screen applications that run on 5250 terminals so we can concentrate on one task at a time. Sorry Mr. Manager I am reading my e-mail your dying server will have to wait until I have completed and replied to everything before closing out that application to log into the server and see whats going on.
IBM has a lot of innovators that work for them. They unfortunately are beat down by the draconian middle level managers and idiots that could never survive anywhere else. Ah yes. The putty colored cube farm with the overly bright florescent lights. The crappy 15 inch tube monitor faced toward the cube isle so you have no privacy. The "clean desk policy" forbidding people from leaving items on their desk. The security team that sniffed the network like crazy and who would roam the cube farm looking for someone who went to the bathroom and left their drawers unlocked. What innovative ideas!
We seem to be evolving a culture where we try to solve every problem with technology. Sometimes technology is not the answer.
No. Clearly the problem is that people are invited to meetings when they feel there is more value in doing something else than actually paying attention at the meeting.
Probably the best solution is to have fewer meetings and make them shorter and more focused.
If you then still need the meeting and making it shorter and focused does not keep the attention of the people involved, maybe they need a different job where they won't be distracted by such meetings.
I work for a large corporation and I believe we have far too many meetings that are not really needed. When I'm bored in one of these meetings, I like to look around the table and try to estimate the cost in salary and benefits of the particular meeting. With a VP, a handful of directors and several managers, a one-hour meeting easily costs the company a few thousand dollars.
This kind of technology won't solve the problem of people doing other things in meetings and it will most likely just piss them off.
The app seems like a verbose way of saying that the calendar system shuts down access to other apps during the meeting; which is a technical solution to a social problem (people banging away on laptop keyboards during meetings)
I've done that with blackberries during meetings. If you have a blackberry enterprise server, the blackberry admin can remotely change the password and lock a blackberry.
Most of the time we play solitaire in the meetings anyway.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Except he clearly said that he does support the government suppressing software patents. He supports companies acquiring inane software patents so they can compete under the current system, but only until it's possible to get rid of them all at once, instead of having a handful of companies be matyrs.
It does sound like anyone bored by the meeting should be running their Lotus Notes in VMware. I run Windows in virtualization anyway, to stabilize hardware interactions with my desktop and laptop.
The actual solution, assuming your not on a videoconference, is to just bring a magazine or book to work and read that when you're not supposed to be using your computer in the meeting. Or a PSP. They haven't invented a way yet to get disinterested people to be interested in stupid meetings. Even if you're face tp face, you can always just extensively take notes during meetings as a way to take your mind off having to actually pay attention. (If what I just wrote seems counter-intuitive, try it sometime -- extensive note taking both keeps you awake and creates a record of what happened, but it also enables you to totally turn off your brian and makes time pass quickly as you concentrate on things like your margins, handwriting, ink-pressure on the paper, etc.)
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I'm going to patent not letting your employees drink on the job, and not license it to anyone!
The clean desk policy and security stuff is something I have seen at other places with cube farms too.
And there are good reasons for it too. The last thing you want is some cleaner earning 5c a night spotting something someone left out on the desk labeled "confidential" and deciding to steal it and offer it to the highest bidder.
I don't know of any existing products with this functionality.
You must have never tried /usr/games/adventure. Collosial caves were typically closed until 5 pm or so.
...that 80% of meetings are unnecessary. I think I'll patent some technology which addresses this issue.
Probably the best solution is to have fewer meetings and make them shorter and more focused.
Which is kinda hard when half of your audience is busy being elsewhere with their thoughts.
You have to start somewhere. Speaking as someone who is leading meetings on a regular basis, I would gladly take any and all technological solutions to shut down all electronic devices in the room. After a few meetings without, I'm sure people would notice how much more focussed, efficient and thus shorter these meetings can be - but getting there is the problem. And no, convincing people doesn't work, we've tried that. People are too deluded about their own abilities ("oh, no problem, I can listen at the same time I'm typing on the computer. What was it you said?").
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
... such ridiculous patents that the patent office can no longer take itself seriously, if indeed it still does.
They're too late. Much too late:
766,171 "Apparatus for signalling from a grave" (before horror movies even existed)
1,749,090 "Apparatus for obtaining criminal confessions" (oooh, scary ghosts)
2,929,459 "Rocket-propelled pogo stick" (yay for Wile E Coyote!)
3,216,423 "Facilitating birth by centrifugal force" (I kid you not)
4,016,875 "Penis locking and lacerating vaginal insert" (the mind boggles)
4,429,685 "Surgical procedure for unicorns" (WTF?)
5,443,036 "Method for exercising a cat" (fun with a laser pointer)
5,456,625 "Jesus doll lights when crucified" (surreal BDSM toy, intended for kids!)
6,025,810 "Faster than light communication" (physics from another reality)
6,368,227 "Method of swinging on a swing" (eventually cancelled, alas)
This is just a sampling from my collection of US PTO brainfarts. Other wierd wonders have titles such as "Body condom", "Santa Claus detector", "Making a drink hop along a counter", "Thermochromic urinal mat", "Motorized ice-cream cone", "Electrified table cloth", and so forth. I've also collected turds from the French, German, Japanese, and UK patent offices, but they are less profligate than the US patent orifice.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
For boosting the productivity.
Seriously, Lotus is the curse of many teams I work(ed) with and only a few had guts enough to force management into excluding them from the beast's reach.
before it was introduced so I claim it fails under Prior Art.
How about just demanding all laptop lids should be shut?
We seem to be evolving a culture where we try to solve every problem with technology. Sometimes technology is not the answer.
No. Clearly the problem is that people are invited to meetings when they feel there is more value in doing something else than actually paying attention at the meeting.
Yes. Clearly, what you are describing is indeed a social problem, not a technical one.
> For prior art, check out any MMORPG with a parental control feature, or firewalls with time lock options
They are not calendaring and scheduling systems though.
it also enables you to totally turn off your brian and makes time pass quickly
I hope you are a girl. Actually that doesn't make it good either.
They are not calendaring and scheduling systems though.
Of course not. I don't think that adds enough novelty to deserve a patent, any more than adding "... on the internet" should make recycled business plans patentable.
Those who give up modpoints for mocking patents, deserve both.
Dear Mr Anyanwu,
I understand that you and your tribal chiefs held a tribal meeting without lotus notes last Tuesday. This is in direct infringement of our patent, and I hereby issue a cease and desist order. The fact that you have no computer or electricity does not give you the right to ignore our intellectual property rights. If you would like to cont
Amen. A lot of people also like to blame new tech for these kinds of problems.
Have we really become a society that believes that the only way to prevent anti-social or anti-productive behavior is to use tech and patents to make it impossible?
If a company doesn't like what people are doing during their meetings, they should consider why people aren't paying attention (maybe the meeting wasn't necessary) and if they determine that the employees really are out of line, punish them.
These days, we've adopted this concept that you can't punish people for incompetence or negligence, as long as society didn't do anything to prevent the person from doing what they did. Trust me, within a few years, you're going to see the first murderer use the defense that they are not at fault because society allowed them to purchase the weapon, or a child-molester who says "neither she, nor her parents did anything to prevent me from having sex with her, If this 10 yr old didn't want to have sex, she should have said so, or her parents shouldn't have sent her to summer camp.
What about taking minutes of the meeting on a laptop? I did that for a while, and nobody complained.
Several studies have shown that the productivity of a meeting begins to drop off rapidly when you add more than three people. The only real reason for bigger meetings is to share blame. Fewer meetings is not the correct solution, smaller and shorter (but potentially more) meetings is. If a lot of people need to know what was discussed at the meeting then email out detailed minutes, don't require them to all be there in person.
If someone is not paying attention in a meeting, it means that they don't feel that the meeting demands 100% of their attention, and if that is the case then they are probably right. Rather than force them to sit in a meeting which only demands 50% of their attention on average, split it into two meetings, one where they do have to pay attention 100% of the time, and one where they don't have to attend.
If you read any management theory textbook written in the last 30 years, you'll see exactly this advice.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The Lotus Notes team at IBM is a bunch of whiny fucking losers. I wonder if they can patent that?
I don't really understand the business problem that this "invention" is intended to solve. If a manager doesn't want people using their laptops during his meeting... he should, well, tell the guy sitting ten feet directly in front of him to kindly close his laptop.
This is a technical version of your old college roommate leaving you angry notes to clean up or change your habits... because the person was too weak and passive to simply have an adult conversation to your face. A manager who has to "communicate" with subordinates in such a manner should not be a manager in the first place.
I don't know of any existing products with this functionality.
I do. It's called not touching the computer, cell phone, PDA, etc. during the f@#$ing meeting.
So they wrote it up first, and you're bitching because you lack the creativity or ambition to do so yourself.
They invented nothing. They created nothing. I've been going to meetings for years and have been "suppressing de-focusing activities" during those meetings by not touching a computer. Is it so hard to not touch the computer that a process needs to be patented? This is the epitome of retarded patents.
Or you could do something really radical and not hold boring meetings.
I like to look around the table and try to estimate the cost in salary and benefits of the particular meeting. With a VP, a handful of directors and several managers, a one-hour meeting easily costs the company a few thousand dollars.
We need to invent a big ol' tote board sign wired to a prox card reader at each seat. When you sit down the board logs you in and starts adding your hourly rate second by second to a giant total on the board, so these management fuckers can see how much they're costing the company as they talk about synergizing their core competencies.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Wow! First the banks, then the mortgage companies, then this thread. 2008 must be the year of the Epic Fail!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The clean desk policy and security stuff is something I have seen at other places with cube farms too. And there are good reasons for it too. The last thing you want is some cleaner earning 5c a night spotting something someone left out on the desk labeled "confidential" and deciding to steal it and offer it to the highest bidder.
In my opinion, most stuff labeled "confidential" isn't really worth anything to anyone. Good luck trying to sell it... See the recent Cohen movie for instructions on how to (not) sell a former CIA agent's memoirs to the russians...
IMHO IBM, have all the patents you want against your inferior Lotus Notes products; the only thing you can claim as intellectual property and protect is 'garbage' and I've got plenty of that around.
The law should apply the same way to everyone. Why shouldn't Verizon patent an invention that could be patented if anyone else invented it?
The problem with software patents is that something like this is a great idea, but not patentable without much greater detail. Patenting "turn off non-sanctioned apps during web meetings" is hardly enough to go on. Such a patent would have to be much more specific... down to OS level hooks like how you're going to block screens from showing and restrict access to focus changes. The result would be a patent so specific to how Windows works that it wouldn't apply to Gnome or OSX.. and to "stretch" the patent wouldn't be right either because those systems do things differently.
I think the feature is cool. I've been in web meetings where somebody's email notification keeps popping on the screen... this could cause important "company private" information to be leaked, or worse somebody pop into their email while meeting then every body sees their mailbox. Blocking an app from showing during an web meeting is a useful and clever idea, without actually closing the app so the meeting users don't lose their workflow.
If the first thing that comes to mind when reading a patent is duh. Then the patent should not be issued.
Crossword puzzles. Just put one on the top page of a clipboard holding a pad of paper and lean back a bit and it will look like you're listening and taking notes, but you're actually trying to figure out what 5 across is.
Hold it, are you saying that IMB has patented a way to make people hat notes even more?
There is a whole slew papers coming out of pundits and academia these days on 'presence' and products for managing 'presence'. Things like knowing and managing the state of remote workers ... on the phone, off of the phone, etc. Controling messaging
during meetings is one of the prime examples that is given for a benefit of a 'presence management system'. So this patent of IBM's could be a key patent in this brave new world the pundits are dreaming of.
...Microsoft plans to patent running any computer system without a Windows operating system.
Nope.
Since the Lotus Notes server is called "Domino", then the time traveling robot obviously must be called a Dominator .
(And of course any female version would be a Dominatrix)
The only mention of Lotus in the patent was that one of the people was part of the Lotus group. Kind of a stretch to say that it is _only_ Lotus to be banned. Basically what it said (as far as I could parse the crappy legalese grammar) was shut off your cellphones and computers.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I am currently in a meeting, you insensitive clod
They invented nothing. They created nothing. I've been going to meetings for years and have been "suppressing de-focusing activities" during those meetings by not touching a computer. Is it so hard to not touch the computer that a process needs to be patented? This is the epitome of retarded patents.
This has nothing to do with popping up a message that says "please don't touch your computer" - this is about a patent that prevents you from doing so, presumably by forcing the meeting or webinar to full screen, and disabling alt-tab, etc.... the only way to go to another program is to LEAVE the conference.
This is actually incredibly useful. This is why products like Citrix's GoToWebinar tell you what percentage of time your attendees were in other windows, and why they support pop-up polling to see if you were paying attention. In some circles (classes offering CEU credits in certain fields for example) being able to show attentiveness is a requirement. I worked for a firm where we setup a very elaborate local and remote training system, and it was those features that convinced the licensing board to allow us to offer the class remotely. Our customers loved it, since some were quite far away and just paid for classes elsewhere, rather than travel to our free ones.
Did you mean
? :)
Liberty uber alles.
How about "... on weed"?
I think that in these companies, and many other individuals, see Democracy as an opportunity for themselves to stay free under Democracy's rule, while subverting others below them to enslavement to their little dictatorships within the Democratic system. The patent system may exist for the sake of equality under Democracy, but it appears it is being manipulated to substantiate little dictatorships within a Democracy. It is just one of many system in Democracy that is being manipulated for this purpose. How about we enforce the principles of true Democracy and stop all these attempts to create little dictatorships with system, so that EVERYONE is free and benefits from Democracy, not just a select few.
It's Become Mine
Keep in mind that inside of IBM very few meetings take place in person. IBM is a very distributed organization, with a great number (probably the majority) of its employees working from home, so meetings are normally conducted via phone and netmeeting.
Obviously you can't tell people in such an environment not to "bring their laptop", nor are there body language cues available to let you know if people are paying attention.
However, IBM does not use this Notes-blocker internally, not that I've ever seen, and I think trying to require it would provoke mutiny. IBM employees are expected to behave professionally, and in turn expect to be treated as professionals. Disabling their tools during meetings would go against the grain.
Also, it's not uncommon for the participants in a tele-meetng to use Notes to exchange documents during a meeting.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Isn't this the same IBM that a few years ago decided to patent the patenting process?
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
In a poker game?
hi!
Probably the best solution is to have fewer meetings and make them shorter and more focused.
I have this patented already. Sorry!
...known as "Notes clients".
This has nothing to do with popping up a message that says "please don't touch your computer" - this is about a patent that prevents you from doing so, presumably by forcing the meeting or webinar to full screen, and disabling alt-tab, etc.... the only way to go to another program is to LEAVE the conference.
Well I guess if you have the mind and attention span of a 3 year old this is for you. For those of us who are actually adults and can control ourselves this is laughable.
Well I guess if you have the mind and attention span of a 3 year old this is for you. For those of us who are actually adults and can control ourselves this is laughable.
I guess if you have the mind of a 3 year old you might simplify things like you just did. Here's a concrete example of why it might be useful. In Florida, if you get a speeding ticket, and haven't had too many, you can take a 4 hour online course which reduces your points to ZERO (and therefore preserves your insurance rates). Guess what, when I took it, I found the Q&A far to easy and the pace of the audio WAY to slow, so I was... yup, in another window most of the time! Is that really because I have the mind of a 3 year old?
Besides... you're confusing the people who might be interested in such a system (those who have had to set up webinar facilities) with those who might be attending such sessions. I'm a three year old with no attention span because I realize if you host 100 employees in a webinar 30-40% of them are going to be tempted to check their email instead?
Yes. A lot of the teams I worked with at HAL were spread across the country. So, meetings were almost almost always held via conference call.
And, you're right, they definitely do not use note blocker in-house. I remember a call with the security goons (aka the IES Committee) where it became obvious that the members were holding the real meeting via Sametime. Long pause... clickty click click click... "No, your lab systems are still considered servers. Permission denied."
I'm sure my off-shore replacement will have much the same problem.
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
How about a patent on IBM not "inventing" anything again? Lotus sucks btw.
i used to work for ibm. they are a bunch of complete idiots who only have jobs because of government pork. mostly they are just a proving ground for finding and promoting spooks. nobody ever actually does 'work', mostly they just sit around eating and playing video games. Overweight Americans are more than just a stereotype!
This does sounds like a cool idea to me and I have not seen this implemented before.
At least in my company, a lot of meetings, conference calls happen with the team sitting in many different locations including offices, conference rooms, people's homes, airport, wherever. The ability to temporary disable/suspend IMs, new email notifications, etc. during a meeting that is marked "dedicated" sounds extremely useful. If the meeting recipient cannot make that kind of a commitment, that tells the person setting up the meeting a lot and whatever discussions need to happen can happen. Once the attendees accept, then they are conveniently prevented from "drifting" off during the meeting.
Of course, I agree that part of this is a social issue. There is nothing to prevent someone attending a meeting from home and go on mute while watching TV but if that is the case, then there is a more serious issue that technology cannot address. However, what this patent idea can address is to help people who legitimately want/need to attend a meeting do so. Not all of us are very disciplined with responding to IMs or new emails. Every time an IM pops up on my laptop or a ring tone sounds indicating I have new email, I feel compelled to read/respond. It seems like for that part of the population, this feature would really help. Lastly, how often have you put yourself "away" in IM and still get messaged non-stop? Seems like this would put an end to that as well (without being in DND mode and outright blocking all messages, I am hoping that suspend queues up messages.) There are always ways for people to work around technology. However, that does NOT invalidate what technology can do to help at least a part, if not most, of the people.
The only real reason for bigger meetings is to share blame.
Too simple. It might often be one reason, but there are quite a few others. In my specific case, for example, I don't even set the number of people I have to invite, the law does. Sure, the meeting might be more productive with less people, certainly without a couple specific ones, but if for whatever reason you can't choose (and while mine is an especially clear case, you very often can't really choose all that much) - well, then there's other variables that you can and should work with.
If you read any management theory textbook written in the last 30 years, you'll see exactly this advice.
Yeah, thanks. They probably go on to mention that in real life, things are a tad more complicated. For example, sometimes people insist on attending even though it bores them to death, because it's a status symbol, makes them feel important, or even justifies their position. Sometimes you have to have people from every department or site involved in the room, just to make sure nobody can say afterwards that they weren't asked for their opinion.
There's lots and lots of other soft factors.
Sometimes, you know perfectly well that inviting just three people would give you a much better meeting - but you don't know which three.
Nah, the advise is sound. Implementing it can get a bit tricky. "turn your mobiles off, please" is very simple, and gives immediate ROI.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Then, someone will just come up with at Star Trek The Next Generation-like "Annular Confinement Beam"... Or, just boost the relay through a mobile or stationary concentrator matrix or some such...
But, someday, if not already done, someone will go spastic and sue the theater and hollywood when while viewing a movie they miss a critical business venture signing call, or when a call notifying them their dependent/s ended up in a hospital and died 2 hours beforehand....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I don't know why people are so upset? Sure its sad that our patent system can be abused in such an insane way but this is hardly news.
The way I look at it noone uses notes and the patent will prevent other technology companies from incorporating similiar access controls into their software.
I appreciate maintaining my ability to continue to be able to do useful work such as posting to slashdot while simultaneously participating in a useless meeting.
Its still laughable. Very simple, pay attention and don't touch the computer. There, was that hard?
Maybe I should patent it.."a process of acting like an adult, paying attention, and not checking your email every 2 minutes while attending seminars". Sounds like I could make a bundle.
IBM itself needs this capability, chiefly because IBM meetings are generally so boring that you naturally desire to do anything else. ;-)
Someone should come up with a patent to extinguish bad meeting presenters based on a vote by the participants. :-)
Ups.. That is very bad for allmost 400k ibmers (inc me) - our managers are processing most of our e-mail requests during the meeting's and conf calls ;-) If they can't do it any more - goodbye vacations, goodbye company travel, goodbye hw/sw purchase and many more goodbyes...