In Finland the universities (and I believe in many other European universities have/had this as well) there was "academic quarter" which meant that if something was scheduled for 10am it would actually start at 10:15am. IIRC if they used precise time (10:00) then it would actually start at that time. I've heard it dates back to when people didn't have easy access to precise time. It would allow students to hear the h…
If I was in the room, I'd be relieved. I always found that meetings at large companies dragged on unless there was a forcing factor (like a doorknock) that got someone to bring it to an end.
I found myself more on the side of the meeting crashers, even though the article paints them as the villains. I've been in vastly more hour long meetings that were longer than necessary than ones that were too short. In meeting-heavy orgs it is really annoying to have meetings led by people who regularly run up to or beyond the final minute of the time slot. Those extra few minutes practically never produce anything…
I don't mind if a meeting is an hour, but I'm genuinely a bit peeved every time I'm in a 50 minute meeting that just automatically rolls over. If you want to do an hour, book an hour.
(All I actually do about this is be the person who pops up in meeting-chat at XX:51 with a "time-check: we've gone over".)
The backstop forcing function to end meetings is the conference room being booked for the next slot... One of the things I noticed during COVID when everyone was remote was that meetings would never end on time b/c there was no contention for meeting rooms.
I wish they added a feature to Teams where it will just automatically disconnect everyone from the meeting at the scheduled end time.
I’ve used a system that did this. Everyone created the call by adding 30 minutes to the theoretical end time just so it wouldn’t cut the conversation.
Fifteen minutes late used to be the academic standard in Germany (and other countries): it was noted by “c.t.” in the timetable, meaning “cum tempore”. When I studied it had already been mostly abolished. Sometimes starting times were explicitly marked “sine tempore”.
Those are strange annotations; it looks like at least one word is missing. They mean "with time" and "without time".
Tempore is in ablative case, and in english there isn't a good substitute. This means it isn't a static set time event, it has some leeway so to speak. German has the ablative case, so I think it works out for them.
> When 2:50 rolled around and your meeting was supposed to end, do you think people actually ended the meeting? Noooooo. Absolutely not! At U of M, they solved this problem by having classes officially start 10 minutes after the time they were advertised as. That is, a class listed as being 10-11am was actually 10:10-11am; nobody showed up until 10:10. Sure, technically it's the same thing, but there's a pretty massi…
Our team did the same during the pandemic. They declared that the first 5 minutes of every meeting were for bio breaks.
Now meetings actually start at :05 or :07. The prior meeting will often drag until that time, but you don't feel bad knocking at :00 or :02 and asking for the room to clear.
This isn't malicious compliance. The room wasn't booked, a team booked it. They have a right to expect others to exit. If you want to book an hour, book an hour.
> When 2:50 rolled around and your meeting was supposed to end, do you think people actually ended the meeting? Noooooo. Absolutely not! At U of M, they solved this problem by having classes officially start 10 minutes after the time they were advertised as. That is, a class listed as being 10-11am was actually 10:10-11am; nobody showed up until 10:10. Sure, technically it's the same thing, but there's a pretty massi…
I'm sure that's where Larry Page got the idea.
Unfortunately UMich ended "Michigan time" back in 2018. I always thought it was a great solution to the problem.
> When 2:50 rolled around and your meeting was supposed to end, do you think people actually ended the meeting? Noooooo. Absolutely not! At U of M, they solved this problem by having classes officially start 10 minutes after the time they were advertised as. That is, a class listed as being 10-11am was actually 10:10-11am; nobody showed up until 10:10. Sure, technically it's the same thing, but there's a pretty massi…
In Finland the universities (and I believe in many other European universities have/had this as well) there was "academic quarter" which meant that if something was scheduled for 10am it would actually start at 10:15am. IIRC if they used precise time (10:00) then it would actually start at that time. I've heard it dates back to when people didn't have easy access to precise time. It would allow students to hear the h…
In Poland "academic quarter" has a sense that if the teacher didn't show up and it's 15 minues past, the students can leave. They still need to show up for the class at 00 every time and are scolded to varying degree if they showed up after the teacher started which they do right after they arrive.