[sudo-discuss] meetings, learnings from biohacking

Fri Apr 26 13:53:06 PDT 2013

TL;DR -- please don't try to solve reticence to attend meetings with more
meetings of any kind.

Introverts have limited social energy, and if they have spent any time
thinking about this, they will realize that it has to be metered carefully.

http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/extravert-and-introvert.asp

Extroverts tend to feel that more social time is always justified, which is
why meetings tend to expand in all situations where extroverts outnumber
introverts -- which is basically most of the time in an organizational
setting... except perhaps in libraries and hackerspaces :)

The greater the number of extroverts, the more the extroverts socialize and
feel that this time is productive, which creates more demand for more
meetings, which makes the introverts feel unproductive and marginalized.

Corporations tend to have a disproportionate number of ESTJs
(extroverted-sensing-thinking-judging) types.  This was covered in a paper
circa 1999 (I need to find it again, I wrote a paper referencing it),
wherein they found that as corporations grow from small to medium to large,
the diversity of personality types dramatically decreases, especially in
positions of power.  Specifically (with arrows indicating greater weight
towards a skewed ratio):

E/I -->> E
S/N -->  S
T/F -->  T
J/P -->> J

There are of course problems with the MBTI, well-discussed in an episode of
Rationally Speaking a few months back, and also some covered on this page
(which is also a podcast):

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221

...but even if it lacks predictive power, its use as a descriptive tool to
look at broad patterns is still somewhat respectable.

I think it's interesting that the "managerial type", ESTJ, appears
consistent at least across American and Chinese cultures, which helps
address the "isn't this Western-cultural specific" complaint:

https://www.capt.org/JPT/article/JPT_Vol69_1209.pdf

Introverts also tend not to speak up in opposition to what extroverts are
doing, for obvious reasons.  They prefer to withdraw and spend time on
things that recharge their social energy.

The point:

* Extroverts feel energized from social encounters and want more of them;
introverts feel drained by social encounters and try to avoid them.

* Extroverts tend to "select" other extroverts for participation, believing
they are just better team players.

* Introverts tend to be penalized for their unwillingness to participate in
social encounters, leading to a more skewed proportion of extroverts to
introverts as introverts become marginalized.

Conclusion:

* You can't solve meeting reticence with more meetings.

--Naomi, the "I can pretend to be an extrovert sometimes" introvert, INTP

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 1:43 AM, Romy Ilano <romy at snowyla.com> wrote:

> Yeah, I have to say that I enjoy the recent meetings too. they're getting
> more creative, people are eating more...
>
> i brought up considering an introverted person focus / working meeting as
> I was hearing people saying they weren't that into it, it's important to
> listen! as many things get done during meetings.
>
> meetings serve people who are extroverts (like me), who like to talk and
> socialize a lot with many new faces...
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:19 PM, Ryan Bethencourt <
> ryan.bethencourt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I do like the format of one general meeting a month (to discuss all sudo
>> room goings on) and then the other three meetings can be working/learning
>> meetings. Maybe with a 15-30 min talk of something of interest so that
>> we're all learning and sharing.
>>
>> Patrik suggested the split between general meeting and working meeting
>> and it's helped us to slice up our time a little bit better to dive into
>> different topics/subjects. I have really enjoyed Sudo rooms recent
>> experiments with meeting formats though (I'm finding them more interesting
>> and more valuable personally).
>>
>> R
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Naomi Most <pnaomi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> You still need to define "working on what", otherwise you end up having
>>> to waste a lot of time defining that in the moment.
>>>
>>> General meetings still need structure, otherwise people lose sight of
>>> them having any purpose and they tend to expand in scope and time length
>>> geometrically.
>>>
>>> I still think sudo room would do fine simply splitting out Bureaucracy
>>> and the current general meeting, which actually runs quite well most of the
>>> time.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, April 25, 2013, Anthony Di Franco wrote:
>>>
>>>> That's a great idea.
>>>> Or, just separate the weekly meeting into general and working time
>>>> blocks so people can come to whichever they would like.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 8:33 AM, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 7:51 AM, Marina Kukso <marina.kukso at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> for the biohackers is a working meeting a hacking meeting or a
>>>>>> meeting where business relating to the functioning of the group gets done?
>>>>>> because if it means the latter, then our meeting is supposed to be that :P
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Typically more of the latter, because of the stage the bio group is
>>>>> at, at the moment. But as long as we're making significant progress towards
>>>>> having a functioning DIYbio lab, it's all good.
>>>>>
>>>>> We also have a "general meeting" for the East Bay DIYbio group (every
>>>>> last friday - coming up tomorrow!) that is more about making introductions,
>>>>> exchanging cool ideas, socializing, etc. Which is also essential for
>>>>> building a community, but if we only have that kind of meetings, we'd never
>>>>> get any of the boring logistics done.
>>>>>
>>>>> "General meeting" and "working meeting" is just what I've started
>>>>> calling them, and nobody has called me on it yet ;-) For the first "working
>>>>> meeting", we set it up over email among some of the key members, because we
>>>>> wanted it small and focused enough to actually get anything done. But I
>>>>> think as long as we advertize that this is a *working* meeting, and that
>>>>> people will be expected to contribute and get something done, they will
>>>>> automatically self-select accordingly.
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe sudoroom needs a separate "general meeting" that is more
>>>>> free-form, and not focused on rules issues etc? Heck, I might even come to
>>>>> those! ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>> Patrik
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> sudo-discuss mailing list
>>>>> sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
>>>>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Naomi Theora Most
>>> naomi at nthmost.com
>>> +1-415-728-7490
>>>
>>> skype: nthmost
>>>
>>> http://twitter.com/nthmost
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> sudo-discuss mailing list
>>> sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
>>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ryan Bethencourt
>>
>> Tel: (415) 794 6463
>> ryan.bethencourt at gmail.com
>>
>> www.bamh1.com
>> www.linkedin.com/in/bethencourt
>> www.logos-press.com/books/biotechnology_business_development.php
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> sudo-discuss mailing list
>> sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>
>>
>

-- 
Naomi Theora Most
naomi at nthmost.com
+1-415-728-7490

skype: nthmost

http://twitter.com/nthmost
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