Those who most resist virtual meetings are often the ones who are more adept at controlling ftf flow. So, there’s actually a political dimension to the comparison, because it can change who has the advantage, and as a result change the conclusions and outcomes of a meeting.

To take it a step further, if Microsoft is a ftf culture, it is likely dominated by folks who are adept with that mode of interaction. It is also likely that they will, consciously or otherwise, strive to maintain the status quo. Microsoft may manufacture dog food, but leave it to the dogs to eat…

Instead of your connection being off or on, perhaps a platform-wide “available/busy/unavailable” switch to kill email polling, chat notifications, etc.

Quite the parenthetical zinger, though, eh? Incidentally, there was a Polycom videoconferencing setup in one of the rooms I was in, and we used it to reasonably good effect — modulo the obligatory wasted time fumbling around to get it started up.

“Changing that requires more than eating dogfood.”

Well, there are some important missing flavors of dogfood. Your point about attention is spot on. We’ve invented lots of ways to be always on, but not enough ways to be selectively on and off. This matters more and more as the tech erodes the ability of the walls of the meeting room to keep anything out or in.

But this isn’t just a Microsoft issue, there’s a meeting-centric culture everywhere I’ve ever worked. The same thing happens at W3C. I remember being frustrated when I first got involved with them that F2F meetings were where most of the work got done, and had the same reaction – why not use the Web to do more of the shared document development? When Wikis came along, there was no technological excuse not to.

I think the basic issue is *attention* – if I’m here in my home office (at the moment) and you’re in yours, and we’re working with 5 others scattered around various timezones, and we all have different priorities on what absolutely has to be done today, and all sorts of incoming distractions, then the chances of having a focused email, IM, or collaborative Wiki sesssion for more than an hour or so are not good. Dragging people into a conference room forces them (at least before WiFi!) to focus on one issue and the group in the room. This may be particularly important at Microsoft because so many people have so many things going on in their heads and (given the relatively non-hierarchical “meritiocratic” culture) that its necessary to shut off the other stuff to get collaborative work done.

Getting the bulk of work done remotely can be practical, especially since research, contemplation, and prose-crafting is best done in private, and then just the give and take of critiquing, responding, and deciding can be done in person… leading maybe to a decision, or to another round of research and contemplation. But the tendency most places is to just call a meeting, and jumble up the research, thinking, evaluating, and deciding. Changing that requires more than eating dogfood.