Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

Shifting the topic slightly, but I've trying to encourage colleges to do walk-and-talk meetings when your not really going to be using a computer/AV equipment (and it's only one or 2 of you). I cant seem to get traction. It seems people are just so used to going to a room and sitting there it seems to foreign to do otherwise but I think it would be a good culture shift if we could do this more.

View on HN

Walking and talking is nice because it actually seems like the conversation moves figuratively to match the literal movement of the walk. My conversations are less likely to get stuck at an impasse or wallow in minutiae. While walking and talking on the street or sidewalk conversational "goals" or "points" seem to be met or solidify at major landmarks. This is in no way quantified, but just something that seems to have happened enough for me to notice and find it curious.

Do the walks/talks always follow the same route and physical milestones?

Nope. Three pretty different cities. Various neighborhoods in each city. Sometimes camping or hiking. Different times of day too. They're much more likely to happen with friends than coworkers though, which makes me unsure of their "business value". I do tend to get a lot of personal value out of them while with my friends.

We do this quite frequently at work when the weather permits (or occasionally in circles around the break room when it doesn't); we refer to them as "kinetic meetings". We'll also frequently find that even if there wasn't an original topic for the "meeting" and everyone just wanted to go for a walk, the team tends to cluster into groups working on related problems and there are usually at least one or two breakthroughs that people didn't even know they needed to have.

Well, I can't even encourage people on my team to simply take the stairs for meetings in other floors. Go figure. :) I'm under the impression that this is something very hard to evangelize at work; many people don't care or don't want to think about sedentarism.

I hate the walk-and-talk idea.

I've been walking at lunchtime for over 10 years. For some reason, co-workers think they're being friendly and companionable when they come along. I hate hearing the cheerful: "Hey I'll come and walk with you."

NO. That's my time to be away from you guys. I use that time to think about what I have to do in the afternoon, what I need to include in the report that I'm writing, how I'm going to fix the sticky door in the basement, or what I'm going to get for my wife for her birthday. I don't want to discuss the merits of partially deflated footballs.

I find that I have to sneak out the door when nobody is looking.

I think the suggestion is to turn your meetings into walks, not to turn your walks into meetings.

Those are two very different processes.

I love walk-and-talk meetings. They're the only ones where I feel like I can really speak freely. That, and it's quite nice to take 20 minutes to grab an iced tea on a mellow 70* day.

I like these when there aren't To Dos to write down. :-)

And the purpose of the downvotes were?

Correction for using a smiley? (I wouldn't used one here but come on, this isn't stackoverflow.)

Misunderstanding the post like I did on first reading? (try: "I like these as long as there aren't To Dos to write down." which is a relevant point where the parent just mentioned the lack of A/V equipment.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com