Antisocial Experiment
I’ve been following all the sessions I can possibly attend, take notes, read more material when it’s relevant, etc. But today I’ve decided to do an experiment. I was going to sacrifice a talk by doing things on the computer, while I was attending the session.
It had to be a session I would normally be interested in (or it would not be a fair experiment) and it also had to be a subject that was not hugely important and there’s nothing better at the same time (or it would not be fair to me). I figured that the talk on writing Eclipse processors for annotations, was a good candidate. It’s something I’m interested in, but if I miss it, I won’t be too sad. This is a 45 minute talk too.
There I was, trying to listen and take notes at the same time, doing email, responding to IM, and other stuff people usually do in meetings.
I can honestly say that for the most part, I have no idea what these people talked about. The subject didn’t seem too complicated, certainly less than EMF for example. Actually 5 minutes in the talk, and I was already missing a lot of context.
Lo and behold, I’ve made this enormous discovery: If you don’t pay attention, in addition to annoying other folks with your continuous click-click (I saw their looks) you won’t be able to follow what’s happening.
Don’t do it! Unless of course, you’re doing your own antisocial experiment ;)