The amazing magic meeting room

How on-line conferencing makes us smarter

Our meeting-room

We are all feeling a bit jaded by the sudden shift to online meetings, but these magic meeting rooms don’t just make it possible for us to work from home, they do some truly remarkable things to the way we network, think, and make decisions. At a stroke we have:

• Eliminated our social biases, creating a meritocracy free from the idiosyncrasies of normal primate interaction;
• Removed the mental load of sociocultural interaction, thereby greatly increasing our available mental capacity for analytic thought;
• Transformed the way we interact with information, allowing us to engage in reflective thought whilst simultaneously remaining networked;
• Removed physical geography as a barrier to cooperation, unlocking the possibility of larger and more powerful networks;
• And we can objectively and accurately post-process all these exchanges of information, allowing an unprecedented level of contextualisation and analysis.

Each one of these factors offers us a significant boost in intellectual horsepower. However, if we use our magic meeting room correctly we can combine all of these benefits, thereby utterly transforming the way interact and think.

Eliminating social biases

Our traditional meetings are highly social events. Humans have a unique capacity to cooperate on a huge scale, to achieve this feat evolution ensured that a huge proportion of our brain is dedicated to social interaction and understanding the myriad complex relationships we develop with our fellow human beings. In our traditional face-to-face meetings people take turns, and use subtle cues to indicate that they have something important to say. The dominant primate (who may or may not be the chair of the meeting) will then either let them in or shut them out. By the time we start a face-to-face meeting half the work is already done. The hierarchy has been established by our gender, the seating plan, the volume of our voices, who held the door, the firmness of a hand shake and countless other conscious and sub-conscious signals.

Anyone who handles business negotiations is acutely aware of the way personal interactions determine how we act and behave; this is a powerful aid to communication and influencing other people. However, in daily life these biases can also have the impact of undermining the efficiency of our networks. Some nodes fail to present their information (don’t speak up), other nodes dominate (speak too much) and information is judged as much on its delivery as on its content. By removing all these usual indicators primate of status, the magic meeting room has inadvertently turned our meeting into an egalitarian meritocracy; thoughts and ideas can be judged on their merits, not on the social status of their source.

Increased mental capacity

The complex tapestry of social interaction which takes place in any face-to-face meeting is not only time-consuming but it is also mentally exhausting, using up available effort from our pre-frontal cortex (PFC) — the part of the brain which deals with planning, logical thought and decision making.

One of the biggest complaints about on-line meetings is the lack of personal interaction, and this is a valid concern, non-verbal cues contribute hugely to the way we communicate and understand one another. However, in our new “magic” meeting room most of these cues disappear, therefore an amazing thing happens — by cutting out the vast amount of social information we suddenly have a huge increase in our available “bandwidth”. Due to the lack of other means of communication we are forced to make our opinions explicit. If the meeting is correctly managed this new explicit form of communication, coupled with our increased available brain-power, means that we can achieve an unprecedented level of collective focus.

In this new “magic” meeting room the challenge is to find the sweet-spot: enough personal human interaction to feel properly engaged and connected with the other participants, but not so much that we start burning through mental energy worrying about primate pecking-orders. From my experience of attending online meetings the tendency is to is to fall way below this minimum level of interaction, meaning people become anonymous and disengage to check e-mails or do other work (which is now conveniently at their fingertips).

In our new “magic” meeting room its vital that we inject some basic manners and humanity by dedicate the first few minutes to setting some ground rules for the meetings and engaging on a personal level. Being able to see each other is key: cameras should be on and at eye level (definitely not pointing up your nose!); bright backgrounds which create spooky silhouettes should be avoided; and everyone should introduce themselves and feel that they are being listened to. I also feel it’s vital to use conferencing software that allows everyone to see each other; you probably wouldn’t choose to a meeting in the dark and just point a torch at the few people speaking.

Different ways of thinking and communicating

Our brains interact entirely differently with verbal information, and written information. For starters, verbal information it is presented chronologically, the receiver has no choice as to the speed at which the information is exchanged or where emphasis is placed. However, with the written word the receiver is in control; skimming over waffle, dwelling and re-reading important points. If you watch a group chatting in a noisy bar you will see they take turns to talk, and if you looked inside their heads you would see that when they are “listening” most of their effort is going into preparing and rehearsing for their next turn to speak. However, if you watch someone reading a book it is internal and personal, their mental effort is dedicated to absorbing and arranging the information they receive, filing it and making new connections. In face-to-face meetings we are used to interacting verbally, with a small amount of supporting written or visual material. This is where the “chat box” function in our magic meeting rooms suddenly changes everything; when used correctly it can unlock completely new ways to thinking and networking.

It’s important to curate the use of the “chat box” and control our concentrated exchanges of information. Our experiences of social media demonstrate that the “chat box” can easily become a damaging distraction, private conversations can spin off and light hearted banter can rapidly swamp the conversation. From my experience the best way to use the “chat box” is to ask a specific, but open, question, and then give all participants a minute or two in silence to enter their carefully considered answer. This approach allows each of the smallest networks (brains) to succinctly communicate their most valuable relevant piece of information to every other member of the group. Individuals can then read all of the incoming information (skimming and dwelling at their own pace) in order to achieve a super-concentrated simultaneous information exchange, without the pressure of performing to the group.

Whilst powerful, the shift to written communication can rapidly become impersonal, therefore I’ve found that asking selected participants to unmute themselves and expand on their points is a really effective way to increase engagement and move from the introspective silence of thinking and writing back towards the “sweet-spot” of human interaction. This approach has proven to be a brilliant way to rapidly delve into ideas and concepts, allowing participants to present arguments and counter arguments. Other participants can continue writing comments, thereby inspiring new ideas and connections whilst circumventing the social biases which dominate our normal primate interactions.

More powerful networks

Meetings, seminars, workshops and lectures are all variants on a theme of exchanging information between humans. We use them as a means to learn new things, issue instruction, to make decisions, or to come up with new ideas. We can think of these interactions in terms of a network, information flowing back and forth between different nodes. The nodes may be the neurons within a brain, individuals within a small group, or groups within a larger organisation.

For many years, the zenith of networking has been the international conference, bringing together large numbers of experts to exchange information and make new connections. These events are typically hugely expensive and take years of planning, however, with the magic meeting room we suddenly have the ability to connect more people, instantaneously, and at negligible cost.

Deeper Reflection

In our face-to-face meetings we are used to taking minutes, typically a bullet pointed list of actions. On a good day these are an objective record of events, but are usually captured through the subjective lens of the secretary of chairperson and are unlikely to accurately reflect the true the context of the conversation. In the magic meeting room, we can suddenly keep a complete video and text record the entire meeting. This ability offers obvious benefits of avoiding the need to take minutes and providing a comprehensive impartial record which can be shared stored and shared ad infinitum. However, the real benefit of this record is the way that it empowers us to slowly play-back the meeting and identify details and nuances.

In a face-to-face meeting people’s comments, suggestions and recommendations, are quickly lost, and we are quickly muddled between opening up (suggesting new ideas) and closing down (eliminating options). By replaying our magic meeting these factors can be can be identified, noted and acted upon. Suddenly our networked group interactions (meetings) don’t just give us the ability to group-think, they are unlocking the ability to group-dream. We can re-play, analyse and contextualise the content, identify connections which would otherwise be missed and gain far deeper understanding. I believe this switch from merely taking minutes to “post-processing” should mark a step change in the way we collectively come up with ideas and make decisions.

Small Groups and Big Groups

We have seen how the magic meeting room blocks out all of these traditional primate cues. Whilst this offers some significant advantages it can feel highly impersonal and it rapidly becomes impractical to allow free conversation for groups of more than 9 or 10. Creating break-out groups from a face-to-face meeting is typically a painful process; people get lost or take toilet breaks on-route, disappear to get a coffee, reply to an answerphone message, or struggle to log back into their laptops. However, our magic meeting room can instantaneously split the meeting into sub-groups, and then bring everyone straight back in again.

The use of breakout groups instantly changes the nature of our magic meeting as we can jump straight to the “sweet-spot” for human interaction. In my experience breakout groups of 4–6 people seem to be the optimum size for promoting engagement and injecting energy, 5 minutes seems to be the minimum palatable duration for a breakout session, whilst 10 minutes allows time for reasonably in-depth discussion of a single topic.

When initiating breakout groups, I make sure that participants spend the first couple of minutes introducing themselves. In comparison to the larger meeting these small groups suddenly feel safe and intimate, this seems to create a fabulous psychological side-effect of instantly creating the urge to chat and open up. I find that setting breakout groups a question is a great way to focus conversations an accelerate their interaction. Once back in the main meeting you can then ask groups to summarise their findings, however, I usually prefer to revert to individual opinions in the chat box as a way to rapidly and rigorously capture ideas.

Presenting new information

For dominant primates’ face-to-face meetings are very forgiving, we can present new information in an ad-hoc way, and the social experience makes participants tolerant of slow or muddled presentations. On the other hand, timid primates can find face-to-face meetings terrifying. In our magic meeting room things are completely different. Charisma is no longer a substitute for content; if people’s minds wander you lose them, and attention spans are measured in seconds rather than minutes. However, rather than seeing this as a problem we should embrace it as a huge opportunity. We have a host of new tools at our disposal and when used correctly we can impart new information with unparalleled speed and precision.

In the magic meeting room speed is everything, this places a huge onus on the presenter to be succinct. In face-to-face meetings slides are often used to reinforce key points or provide a backdrop for talking, whilst observes gently shift their attention between the slide and presenter. However, staring at a slide on your computer screen is a far more “in-your-face”, so needs to be applied judiciously. Slides suddenly serve a very different purpose, rather than being a backdrop or a handrail for presenting, they are now a forced injection of information, straight into the brain. If text is used then observers should be given the time to read, and once a slide has served its purpose it should be removed.

The technology that gives us the magic meeting room also means that we can record, edit and produce video of ourselves in minutes, we can then instantly play the video to the meeting. For observes their experience is unchanged, they are watching you presenting on a screen. However, the impact of pre-preparing mini video presentations can be game-changing: even a very simple and quickly prepared video can make a point in ¼ the time of a traditional waffling presentation; it can be checked and edited to confirm accuracy; and can be repeated and replayed as often and widely as required. I have also found that inserting short pre-prepared videos has the unexpected benefit of transform the mental load on the presenter. Rather than burning through nervous and emotional energy attempting to deliver to a prepared script, the presenter can relax, and then engage meaningfully in clarification, questions and discussion, having observed content through exactly the same lens as everyone else. In our magic meeting room slides become the new handouts, and videos become the new PowerPoint presentations.

In face-to-face meetings any pauses whilst a presenter wipes a board or moves a screen is part of the social experience, but in the magic meeting room dead-time seems much longer. I have found that the best way round this is to clearly introduce the IT tools at the start of the meeting, and then have one person dedicated to controlling the IT, whilst the other presents. Whilst this sounds like an additional task, it’s worth remembering that all meetings can be recorded, so the person who was previously employed to take minutes can suddenly become an IT controller.

Conclusion

Over the past few months, we have suddenly lost all ability to meet face-to-face, being forcibly removed from our friends, neighbours and colleagues. We have sought to replace these interactions online, in our magic meeting room. However, our new magic meeting room is something subtly different. Rather than a social gathering it is a connected network of brains, and this network is suddenly un-restrained by group size or geography.

Face-to-face meetings are social events, some ideas are exchanged, but they remain primarily a way for primates to assess hierarchy’s and leaders to assert control over a group. However, in the strangely uncomfortable new magic meeting room our mental energy can suddenly be rediverted from sociocultural considerations to cognitive intelligence. In other words, we can use our brains to think about the subject, instead of thinking about how we relate to the other people in the room.

Our magic meeting room does another remarkable thing, it transforms our options for the way we interact with information. Instead of being confined to verbal communication backed up non-verbal cues we can suddenly leap between large groups, small groups, prepared video and written communication. We can present our thoughts through speech, images and text and remain networked as we read or experience solitary reflection.

The final potent ingredient in our magic meeting room is our new ability to record, and then post-process events. By creating an accurate objective record we suddenly have the ability to replay and contextualise new information, find deeper insights, make new connections take better decisions. We have suddenly transitioned from mere networked thinking to networked dreaming.

For our magic meeting room to work it needs to be kept secure from malicious attack, and we need to become comfortable with a host of new tools. However, if we can embrace the magic, and keep out the baddies, I suspect we may be at a watershed moment in our collective intelligence.