Our policy to conduct meetings without laptops and PDAs has gained national attention.

On Monday, ABC World News came to our office to learn more, which turned into a nationwide piece on World News Tonight. Then Yahoo! ran it as the lead story on their homepage. The meme has even gone global: The Guardian (UK) and SmartCompany (AU) ran pieces on out and ‘top-less meetings.

Watch the ABC World News Report:

 
The top reasons we run meetings without laptops and PDAs are:

• » Meetings generate a more unified focus and completely agreed-to position
• » Decisions made in meetings are much more likely to stand
• » Meetings are much more likely to end on time
• » The Internet can be very very distracting ;>

Of course there are times when it makes sense to have laptops, but it’s almost always just one person, and there’s almost never a reason why that person needs to be checking email or browsing websites.

• » Presentations
• » Note-taking (limited to one person)
• » Group development projects