Augmented meetings

Neural implants are a science fiction cliche — folks in the future have the net wired into their brains.
Leave off the wetware, and the experience is here today.
In his write-up about blogon,Jerry Michalski comments on the discomfort of not having meetings augmented by Social Software:

It’s a slightly spooky scenario, but I’ll confess to having wished for a heads-up display that projects inside a pair of glasses who’s who at a cocktail party, including who used to work with whom, who’s friends with whom (hey, orkut) and who’s dating whom.

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Ross Mayfield adds,

At Socialtext, our meetings are augmented by voice, IRC (with a bot to post to the wiki) and Workspace. By the end of each meeting, enough artifacts are captured in a social context to enable group memory. Similar to using an Eventspace at a conference. When we meet in person we find it to be terribly inefficient. But that said, there is no such thing as virtual beer, the kind of schmooze we go to events for anyway.

Perhaps the the meaning time spent together in person has already changed without us knowing it. One of my favorite Pete Kaminski quotes — time together in person is too important to spend working.