That’s what Johnnie Moore says in this post:

Often, I think the efforts to make meetings productive are actually the cause of the problem. To exclude the risk of failure, a number of boxes get ticked, and action points appear to be agreed. A pleasingly large collection of post-it notes and flip charts are produced. And then not much happens. That’s because people are only half-heartedly agreeing to all these actions in order to pass the test of making the meeting productive.

He makes some great points, the most important being that when we focus too much on the results, the process—the conversation—becomes a byproduct. But it’s the rambling, sometimes off-topic-veering conversations that so often end up with those Eureka! moments. Which makes sense to me. Since we only actually use part of our brains (I think it’s somewhere around 10 percent, or is that an urban legend?) for conscious thought, there’s a lot of brain working behind the scenes. If you give it some space to roam via reflection time and free-form conversation, well, that’s when the best ideas usually pop out. There actually was a study published recently that indicated people were more satisfied with decisions, especially more complex decisions, that were made while the conscious mind was occupied doing something else.

Interesting, eh?

While riding the elevator yesterday at the Marriott Philadelphia Towers, where I’m staying for the Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, I couldn’t help but notice a slight problem with elevator etiquette. You know the way people always face toward the door? Well, this elevator opens up on both sides. So when the door opens and people find their back to it, they quickly shuffle around to face the door. Then on the next floor, the same gig happens as it opens on the other side. Those who’ve ridden it a few times just huddle against the side walls, forced to face each other. For some unknown reason (possibly a lack of sleep), I’m finding this hilarious.

Sunday was filled with more prep work for the Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, which we’re co-organizing with the Center for Business Intelligence. For me, this meant more work with those bags. One of the items to be stuffed in the bags didn’t show up until we were well under way bag-stuffing Saturday, so we were busy throwing in that item, double-checking to make sure everything else was in there, and stacking the bags up by the registration desks. I’ve gotten a little proprietary about these bags, having spent so many hours over the weekend intimately involved with them, and it’s gratifying to see them walking around slung over people’s shoulders as they started coming in for pre-registration yesterday afternoon.

I don’t have much time here, have to get down for a pre-con team meeting at 6:15 a.m. (sleep, sleep, my kingdom for another hour of sleep!), but so far, things are shaping up pretty well. I love Expo Logic’s reg system that we’re using—even I could probably work it in a pinch, should the need arise. While we got a lot of people pre-registered yesterday, we’re expecting a flood of folks in this a.m. before the opening general session at 8. Wish us luck!