On 06/22/04 at 02:32 AM, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> said:
And, I don't think calling such meetings
"perks" is an overstatement.
I've observed quite a few non-profit meetings, as well as meetings and
conferences in academia, and they rarely have much real work being
done. They're social and networking events, and the most "real work"
that gets done is at best finding out about something that you make a
note of to look up and read later. The actual real work gets done via
email or telephone (or both) either before or after the conferences. H.
Cheney's recent email indicated he's had similar experiences on the
non-profit boards he's sat on, so this seems to not simply be my
personal experience.
I think these comments reflect a grave misunderstanding of the importance of meetings.
In the past, I've been involved in a number of EU-funded projects among at times quite
disparate participants, and it was always a given that such projects -- after being
approved for funding -- got off to a start with a meeting with everyone involved.
Sometimes this was the only time the participants met; they then went back to their
respective countries and spent the duration of the project working in their offices and
communicating by email and telephone. But that initial face-to-face was critical; it
isn't something that can be measured in cold person/hour metrics but rather reflects
some as yet not entirely well-understood psychological truth: long-distance, distributed
projects work better when the participants have first met.
If Jimbo, Anthere, and Angela will be working closely together in the coming months and
years, as appears to be the case, than it is entirely appropriate, no, *imperative* that
they meet each other. I would therefore be in favor of Angela being reimbursed for her
travel expenses to attend the Paris meeting.
V.