Companies Banning Laptops From Meetings

Meetings. If you’ve ever watched the movie Office Space or caught an episode of Dilbert, you’ll know that meetings can be quite a pain for many people involved. They can get pretty boring, so the participants start to lose interest. As a result, many people have started bringing their laptops into these meetings, presumably to entertain themselves with some Internet Reversi or something.

Well, it seems like companies are starting to crack down on the practice of bringing notebook computers into meetings, presumably because the people in the meeting aren’t paying attention. There are obviously some legitimate reasons why someone would want to bring their laptop into a meeting — taking notes, for example — but I guess the majority are watching YouTube videos and posting comments on Facebook walls.

Laptop usage is typically discouraged during meetings, but is it really necessary to ban them altogether? Wouldn’t it just be more effective if the meetings themselves weren’t so boring to begin with?