I don’t do meetings. I do tweetings.
Written on September 6, 2008 – 12:00 pm
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
[ This article was originally published at Digital Biographer on 5th September ] © Copyright 2008 Clarocada Ltd. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 UK: Scotland License.
“Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot masturbate” - Dave Barry
I don’t do meetings any more. I used to do a lot of meetings. But not any more. 
The change from meeting to tweeting - where a series of brief exchanges (each a maximum of 140 characters) can make up the content - has been brought about by a variety of factors over the past 15 years or so - but here are the ten factors that I think are critical.
- IN GOOGLE TIME
I no longer have a phone book, business directories or yellow pages. Those were essential when I started my first corporation in 1993. But now, I use Google. As a result, I have less patience for slow ways of doing things - I am impatient. I demand speed, efficiency, and immediate results. - HOLA FONEROS
I have a laptop computer and a mobile phone, I can work from a cafe terrace in Banyalbufar just as easily as anywhere else. As a result, I don’t have the need to restrict myself to doing business with those who are within easy reach of where I live or work most of the time. - HOME OFFICE DRESS CODE
I don’t need to have an office in the city centre to get my work done - I can do it from my home office. As a result, I don’t need to spend time travelling, and so I use that saved time productively. I also find wearing a suit in my own kitchen a bit pointless, so feel there has to be a very good reason to dress up to go somewhere. I like the fact that my carbon footprint’s lower with less travel. - MY ONLINE VISIBILITY
Whereas I used to have to push information out to people in brochures, newspaper interviews, in meetings, at trade shows, I now have online profiles at LinkedIn, Xing, Ecademy, Facebook, Hyves, Flickr, Friendfeed, MyBloglog etc, and I have blogs and web sites that I can update easily in seconds. As a result, I don’t have to spend so much time introducing myself, and explaining what it is that I, or any of my enterprises provide - people find out about me before they meet me, or get to know me through following my activities online. People can meet me at airports because my photo is online. They can also decide whether they need to waste their time meeting me. - I HATE COFFEE
I don’t really like coffee any more. And I especially never liked paying €5 for a cup of it unless it was refilled all day and came with free wi-fi. As a result, when someone says - let’s have a chat over a coffee, I say “No. Let’s save the time and money, and spend five minutes now working out if we need to meet - and if so, what items on the agenda we can dispense with before we need to have a meeting”.
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