As Web-enabled smartphones have become standard on the belts and in the totes of executives, people in meetings are increasingly caving in to temptation to check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, even shhh! ESPN.com. But a spirited debate about etiquette has broken out. Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is as gauche as ordering out for pizza. Techno-evangelists insist that to ignore real-time text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril. [via NYTimes]
Do people lose their common sense when it comes to smart phones? Going back to my post yesterday, I think blackberries and iphones have added to the efficiency bump in industry today, but it makes no sense to me that people can’t sit through half hour meetings without having to play games or checking their email?
People mistakenly think that tapping is not as distracting as talking,” she said. “In fact, it can be every bit as much if not more distracting. And it’s pretty insulting to the speaker.” Still, business can be won or lost, executives say, depending on how responsive you are to an e-mail message. “Clients assume they can get you anytime, anywhere,” said David Brotherton, a media consultant in Seattle. “Consultants who aren’t readily available 24/7 tend to languish.
At what point can we find a happy medium?
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