Meetings are great to discuss something that requires aback and forth.

They are a terrible way to disseminate information. The oral word is simply not as precise nor efficient.

If we are going over something that has complicated steps (say explaining TCP), then I’d prefer a lecture-style recording where I can play back. Of all the crappy things during covid, recorded lectures proved themselves as one of the few goods.

If you’re going to a large meeting in-person to support your teammates, then that’s great. But in that case you should be clear that the goal of the meeting is building up morale.

I would even question what a large meeting is trying to accomplish. There is no way that a 2 hour meeting with 50 different people speaking is going to be relevant to me. Even if there’s a 3 minute slice that’s relevant to me, the signal to noise ratio is simply too high to make it worth me attending. Wouldn’t it be better if I could find a way to know that the 3 minute slice is happening and reach out to the speaker for a conversation afterwards?

I think this relates to an article that boz wrote about being tapped into your organization’s information systems so that you’re not out the loop for important things. What I’m saying here is information systems should disseminate via RFC or text, not high-noise meetings.