“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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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”.
6. MEETINGS ARE GETTING SHORTER
   I arranged a meeting in London (yes, I do still sometimes meet people) with guys coming from Amsterdam and from the USA without ever using a phone - and although we’d not met before, we have already shared dozens of pieces of information that made the business of the meeting last about ten minutes - and then we ordered some food and drinks. We then talked about other interesting stuff and new possibilities - not just ‘the business we need to discuss’.
7. CUT THE CHIT-CHAT
   I can get to know people online by following their updates - or by looking at what they’ve said, or who they’ve been talking with, or who’s been talking about them - and so with this background, a lot of ‘chit-chat’ becomes unnecessary. As a result, I can filter out people, or filter them in.
8. YOU CAN DO THIS TOO
   You are reading this blog. You can send me emails, you can send me stuff without a courier, you can clarify things in Skitch, you can speak on Skype for free, you can send an instant message or a twitter. But you can do this as suits your agenda - and not be dragged into it by another party with an unknown agenda who wants 100% of your attention - NOW.
9. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU
   I can now have customers who I never meet. That used to be very difficult. But now, I can see people, talk to them in real time, swap messages and files, send them sound files and presentations, have a video-conference with them… whether they are half a world away or live around the corner.
10. LIFE’S TOO SHORT
    A friend of mine died suddenly this year. David was 42. He did not suffer fools gladly, and could summarise biblical volumes of information in a pithy, witty phrase. But he ran out of time. We all will.

Now, I realise this might make me sound like an anti-social douche-bag, who’d rather spend his time tapping away at his keyboard than having a normal chat face to face.

But if you’ve met me, you’ll know that I’m a very gregarious and friendly guy who’s always introducing people to each other in social situations. However, that’s because I have time to do that - because I have not been wasting time in avoidable meetings.

I asked a friend about this issue yesterday - here’s what he had to say: -

“I prefer email and tweets and other online communications over telephone and face to face meetings because it allows me to manage my own time. When I’m meeting face to face the other person will automatically assume they have an hour of my time, which seems to be the standard meeting length, and will take all of that time to talk TO me.

In an email I might grasp their concept within 2 minutes and be ready with a reply. Other times I need to think about their message overnight. All of this is impossible in face to face meetings where an immediate reaction and 100% dedication is demanded.”
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

So if you want to have a meeting with me here’s how to start the conversation:- Let’s tweet.

But what about you - what’s changed the way you handle meetings over the past few years?

– © Copyright 2008 Clarocada Ltd. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

The blog (which has since been pulled offline) reveals details of the Minister’s sponsorship of controversial ten-day week legislation, proposed to increase economic activity within the EU. The blog also revealed that his counterpart in Germany, Hans Tyaselv, will be supporting the bill, due to be introduced to the European Legislature in early May.

New real-time update web site twitter.com is buzzing with the news. There is also background input from the BBC with details of the French Calendar.

This is what could be found of Atác’s statement from newwires and the Associated Press archives this morning…

“The economic power of Europe is at stake in the next five years. We are now a community of over 400m individuals, who, by putting aside their national differences, have become a strong economic force capable of competing with the might of the United States. The ten-day week, or decade, has already been introduced in the past, during our own French Revolution, where the universally acknowledged values of liberty, egality and fraternity became part of French law, and similar ideas are now enshrined in the laws of almost every nation. What the ten day week provides is the opportunity for at least 8% greater productivity in working days per year across the nations of the EU, as well as allowing for the observation of all national holidays, and providing most European citizens with an additional 5 days per year of paid holiday.

“As the eminent mathematician Gilbert Romme has shown in his calculations, the mathematics are compelling, even without any discussion of the digital hour or any longer day proposals. This is chance for the people of Europe to increase their economic efficiency overnight, and for this reason I am sponsoring this bill. My colleagues in Germany have already given me their full support, and the so-called “Decade Act” will be moved forward for presentation in May, with the hope being that these changes will be enacted by September 2008.”

“The ten days of the decade are proposed to be called: primidi, duodi, tridi, quartidi, quintidi, sextidi, septidi, octidi, nonidi and décadi. Every décadi will be a rest-day. At the end of the year, the five remaining days of the solar year (16 - 22 September) will be proclaimed holidays: les Fêtes de la Vertu (Virtue), de la Génie (Talent), du Travail (Work), de l’Opinion (Opinion) and des Récompenses (Rewards). In leap years an additional Fête de la Révolution can be celebrated.”

“The year will no longer begin on 1 January, but at the autumn equinox and anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic of France: 21 September. Each month will be thirty days long, divided into three ‘decades’ of ten days each. it is not yet proposed to have a metric day, with ten hours of a hundred minutes, of a hundred seconds, as some integration issues have still to be resolved.”

“I hope that my colleagues across the EU will support this initiative, and although it will shock some people, it is a simple and effective method of ensuring economic growth at a stroke.”

It is widely expected that an official announcement will be made by Atác later today in Paris, with his German counterpart arranging a simultaneous briefing in Berlin to clarify the situation. Some doubts have been expressed by Turkish EU representatives as to whether in fact the blog was legitimate, and suspicions remain that the web site may have been hacked by anti-European activists.

Breaking news: Google still retained a cache copy of the Minister’s original blog.

I am speechless, and glad that some people study design, typography, and measure the effectiveness of how they present their messages.

I am not even providing a link to this to protect the guilty - please believe, I did not make this up. Ok - it’s here, more or less.

Just a fine example of plain speaking and logic. Read “Silicon Valley after a Microsoft/Yahoo merger: a contrarian view“

They’re lovely - I bought 60 already! You can also get the same design as a gift tag. On sale here: http://httv/biz/cards/

5. “Archive and next” shortcut
4. Share mail searches with friends
3. Browser navigation and history
2. Bookmark emails
1. “Filter messages like this”

• Official Gmail Blog: 5 little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about >>

PS: If you don’t have a Gmail account, just ask me to send you an invitation - email david dot petherick at gmail dot com

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The signings followed a hilarious and witty interview between the two authors, both from Canada, which included live questions from the Edinburgh audience.

Due to obvious time restraints, there were only a limited number of signings available, and high-tech met low-tech as audience members queueing for entry were handed raffle tickets for the chance to have a book signed, and Margaret Atwood, inventor of the Long Pen, and a distinguished novelist herself, drew the numbers from the hat.

Just 30 lucky audience members then were able to have their book placed on the amazing “long pen” device, and see and talk to the author signing their book from Canada - who naturally could see and talk to them - all of which was live, broadcast onto large screens, as part of the evening’s event. These tete-a-tete chats will also be added to the Long Pen web site, so that audience members will have the ability to share their chat with the author with a wider audience.

Roza Nazipova, my wife and business partner, asked a question during the audience questions sessions, which was largely, but charmingly, sidestepped by Alice Munro - as to her favourite Scottish or Russian authors, but she did confess to be working on writing about a Russian historical figure. Roza was lucky enough to have her number chosen for a book signing. In one of those odd coincidences in life, so too was a Canadian girl directly behind Roza in the queue, performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a lifelong fan of both authors, and who had the sequential ticket above Roza’s winner (103 just for the curious numerologists among you). Naturally, she had booked her ticket online… but due to a glitch somewhere, had initially received the wrong tickets - but still, here she was. Roza had queued for five hours in June to make sure she had tickets for this event. It all seems to have been worth the effort.

Here is the signing taking place, and Roza Nazipova talking to Alice Munro:

Here is the signature (the book’s action begins in Edinburgh):

And here is Margaret Atwood adding her signature and inscription:

And this is the full inscription, which reads:
‘Alice Munro
and Margaret Atwood
did via LongPen on
August 15 2007′

A big thank you to Catherine Lockerbie, Edinburgh Book Festival Director, and all of the technical staff, for a long anticipated event that will be long remembered - not just for its novelty, but also for the wit, charm and humour of these two amazing authors.

And just think of all those air miles saved…

>> Edinburgh Book Festival
>> Edinburgh Festival (Pocket Tweetmap Edition)

If you feel someone has made a particularly good or bad contribution on a blog, forum or social networking site (or indeed anywhere online), why not award them ‘Speaka’ points?

Simply add the appropriate good or bad image by using the code
<img src=”http://speaka.org/minus3.gif”>
right the way up to
< img src=”http://speaka.org/plus3.gif”>
in your web comments. Simple.

You may also want to link to http://speaka.org/noevil as a reference, where you will find other tools, full codes for links, and other information.

We’re already planning Russian and Spanish versions. Sponsorship, if you are a non-evil corporation, is possible. Your suggestions are welcome.

“Try nice - you’ll like it.”

David Petherick | I am the Digital Biographer

Copy and paste codes here:

<a href=”http://speaka.org/noevil/” alt=”Speaka No Evil” title=”Try being nice, you’ll like it”><img src=”http://speaka.org/minus3.gif” alt=”Minus 3 Speaka No Evil Points http://speaka.org/noevil” align=”left” hspace=”10″ vspace=”10″ /></a>

<a href=”http://speaka.org/noevil/” alt=”Speaka No Evil” title=”Try being nice, you’ll like it”><img src=”http://speaka.org/minus2.gif” alt=”Minus 2 Speaka No Evil Points http://speaka.org/noevil” align=”left” hspace=”10″ vspace=”10″ /></a>

<a href=”http://speaka.org/noevil/” alt=”Speaka No Evil” title=”Try being nice, you’ll like it”><img src=”http://speaka.org/minus1.gif” alt=”Minus 1 Speaka No Evil Points http://speaka.org/noevil” align=”left” hspace=”10″ vspace=”10″ /></a>

<a href=”http://speaka.org/noevil/” alt=”Speaka No Evil” title=”Try being nice, you’ll like it”><img src=”http://speaka.org/plus1.gif” alt=”Plus 1 Speaka No Evil Points http://speaka.org/noevil” align=”left” hspace=”10″ vspace=”10″ /></a>

<a href=”http://speaka.org/noevil/” alt=”Speaka No Evil” title=”Try being nice, you’ll like it”><img src=”http://speaka.org/plus2.gif” alt=”Plus 2 Speaka No Evil Points http://speaka.org/noevil” align=”left” hspace=”10″ vspace=”10″ /></a>

<a href=”http://speaka.org/noevil/” alt=”Speaka No Evil” title=”Try being nice, you’ll like it”><img src=”http://speaka.org/plus3.gif” alt=”Plus 3 Speaka No Evil Points http://speaka.org/noevil” align=”left” hspace=”10″ vspace=”10″ /></a>

Having been interviewed by the BBC last week, the results appeared online at the BBC website today. The article focuses on my work for Thomas Power at Ecademy who reveals that I am the “digital biographer” who helps to manage his online presence.

I am glad I managed to embed the term “digital biographer” in the mind of the interviewer, and was delighted it made its way into the headline. (Not least because I now own digitalbiographer.com)

It does sound a little more literary and glamorous than ‘blog butler’ or ‘cyberspace concierge’ I think!

>> Read the full article ‘Meet the Digital Biographer’ at the BBC Web Site

Full story from BBC here.Those thousands of people round the world who campaigned for Alan’s release always hoped that reason would triumph over violence and coercion. Today, those people have a little victory. Welcome back Alan - it’s good to see you.

I think there will be a few people waiting to say hello when you get back to Scotland!