The first time I had an inkling that J9000 was going to make a real difference was at an engineering meeting that I was politely invited to, attendance optional. I drove into the conference room anyway and parked in a corner. Some of the engineers nodded at me, a couple grinned, but there was no awkward shifting or chuckling. I turned toward the presentation on the screen and watched. I didn’t understand some of the content and asked a couple of questions. Some one answered. The meeting adjourned and I rolled myself out.
And that was pretty much what it would have been like in person. No pre-meeting fiddling to make sure I was on, or slowing down in case I wasn’t following along with the presentation, or post-meeting recapping of anything I missed.
When Lauren and I put together case studies with partners using OpenTok, we try really hard to get the Holy Grail of success stories — measurable data. With our Double, I’m stumped. What’s the ROI of being there? I’ve worked at TokBox for long enough to know that Important Stuff doesn’t always happen in meetings that get scheduled. It’s those meetings that you don’t need to be at but just want to sit in on. Or those meetings that aren’t planned at all but happen when people are working really late and start saying what they really mean. Sometimes it’s not meetings at all — it’s what people’s faces look like at lunch.
