http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010076.html

Jeremy mentions the “No Laptop” meeting rule and how horrible it is that there has to be a rule put in place for common courtesy.

The major problem to this rule is that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to have a laptop in meetings.  As the newer generations are coming out of college, they feel ever more comfortable with taking notes onto a laptop.  Making a uniform rule like this just removes a lot of the nice parts of having laptops in the first place.

There is definitely a problem though with people not paying attention to a meeting (and I will admit, I definitely have done it a lot.)

My proposed solution is actually pretty simple.  People should stop accepting meetings which they don’t have interest in.  A person who does not accept a meeting is saying they are ambivalent to the goals of the meeting.  Only the people who have accepted the meeting invite care about its outcome.  At the end of all meetings, people can get meeting notes.  In an ideal world, this leads to smaller meetings with made up of people who care about the goals.  If someone is curious about the outcome of the meeting, they can read the meeting notes.  Then, if it is a very big deal, one so big, it requires another meeting.  One can be set up where they will accept (because they now care).  Even if it leads to a few more meetings, they would be shorter meetings and there would actually be outcomes from said meetings.

Now granted, we don’t live in an ideal world, so what is a better answer?