One thing that I hope remains with us when we return (in 2034?) to having meetings in real life: speaking one at a time and paying careful attention not to interrupt people.
And to accompany that, not talking in a nonstop way that doesn’t create gaps for people to jump into occasionally*.
Video meetings are total chaos if people all talk at the same time, but we should also realize that many people struggle to be heard in real life because the alpha types dominate.
I myself have often interrupted people and gone on for too long. But I am working on it.
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* This mutualism reminds me, very tangentially, of the story of the deal that Ved Vyasa made with Ganesha when the Mahabharata was first written down. Vyasa needed a scribe to take down the epic he had composed, and Ganesha volunteered. Ganesha said that he would keep writing on one condition: that once he started writing a verse down, his pen should not stop moving, even for Vyasa to take a breath. Vyasa agreed to the deal, but added a condition: Ganesha could only write down a verse if he understood it. When Vyasa needed a breather, he used a complex verse that would make Ganesha slow down to think!
Image source: google images / pinterest (dead link)
