One of the committees I work with decided last night to try to experiment with electronic working alongside its traditional round-the-table kind of meetings. If it works, it should mean fewer nights out at meetings, freeing up the people involved to get on with the task in hand. Those of us who belong to groups which make decisions have a lot to learn about how to make them most efficiently in the internet age. New skills. It will be hard for some people and it is inevitable that for some groups, some people will be unable to join the decision making group because of their reluctance to embrace accept new technology. I remember asking at a meeting recently whether these people mattered. This upset quite a few at the table, particularly when they were forced to admit that in the future such people would have ever decreasing influence.
Of course, I think that it will work both ways. Some people who were formerly unable to join decision making groups because they could not accept the physical and temporal demands of sitting-round-the-table technology will find themselves able to join in.
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