Re: Meeting 2nd half of August!

[David Kastrup]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 05:44:19PM +0100, Colin Hall wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 06:26:34PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>>> > Decent communication in electronic media
>>> > is one of the things I am spectacularly bad at.  One thing that has
>>> > turned out to be effective at times is meeting people in person.
>>> 
>>> I think this is an excellent idea.
>>> 
>>> Anything that gets us away from typing at each other and towards human
>>> contact is a good thing.
>>
>> A less expensive option could be skype chats (or a different
>> program if people wanted an open-source one).  These could even
>> become regular events, such as every Wed at 10:00 UST and Thurs at
>> 23:00 UST.  (picking dates/times randomly)
>>
>> I'm not suggesting video, since even my university internet
>> connection doesn't handle video chats well, but voice could work
>> out.
>
> Yes and no.  That's more or less 1:1 and you don't develop a feeling for
> what makes the quiet one sitting in the corner tick.  The advantage of a
> gettogether is that you don't just see people when they are active but
> also get a feeling for how they react.
>
> The moments where you don't really need to say anything in order to
> communicate are a bit rare on the phone.

The last institute I had been working at at the university was very
successful in getting industry cooperations going, and that was partly
because of the two professors.  With considerable amount of
simplification, you might say that one of the professors was hard to
beat when engaging his brain, and the other was hard to beat when
engaging his liver.  The second probably being more important to the
continuing success of the institute.  Now don't get me wrong: both were
not deficient in the respective other departments, but when this organic
dividing line was the one likely tipping the scale, they knew when to
let the other deal with the respective engagements.

-- 
David Kastrup