Ms the Word: In praise of multitasking

*Not every BlackBerry user is checking the football scores during your presentation*

By Malcolm Allison on Jan 3, 2011

Not every BlackBerry user is checking the football scores during your presentation

I have just checked my BlackBerry and been horrified by how much stuff has come in since I left the office.

Living in a shoebox apartment away from home, life focuses down to things like that.

I cannot get anything intelligible on the television.

I do not believe CNN, and the German channels seem to be full of dubbed American crime shows that I did not enjoy in the original version and cannot be bothered to sit through with lip synch.

But I am bored out of my skull, so I settle down to a courtroom drama-screen shots of anxious faces, quick-fire interactions, and a lot of whispering.

On my last visit home, my wife recounted a meeting she had held and posed a dilemma.

Two of the people in the room were carrying out a mummer's conversation while she was talking, and my wife asked how she should deal with it.

I gave a typical irresponsible bloke answer, something like: Is there something you want to share with the rest of the group, Julie?'

Then I held a group meeting with delegates from around the world.

The agenda went out a week beforehand, some of the key slides were issued in an email two days before, coffee or tea and biscuits, still and sparkling water on the table.

My assistant had called in a technician to run additional cables across the room to power their laptops.

There was a 10-minute delay as we hunted down a European adaptor for one of the Americans, and then we got going.

I found myself presenting to a background of what sounded like fairy tap dancers.

I scanned the room as you are trained to when you present, and most of the audience avoided eye contact

Instead, they focused, cross-eyed, on the screens of their BlackBerries or on the anti-glare surfaces of their laptops.

I smiled to myself and wandered over to Julie.

I got so close she could probably smell the Aquafresh and I grunted gently.

She looked up, hardly pausing to find my face.

I was just about to ask if she had anything she wanted to share with the rest of the group when she said, "Actually, that paper was written in 2007; it was only the abstract that was published in 2006 at the American Heart Association."

I thanked her for her contribution and moved back to the middle of the room.

My self-doubt had led me to think people were not interested and I had wasted my time, whereas in fact some of them-or Julie, at least-were actually capable of listening, searching, and enhancing the experience all at the same time.

So now, if my wife asked my advice, I would not assume the worst and instead ask a question based on what I had been presenting.

I guess some of the time I would be disappointed to find people were checking the football scores, but not necessarily so.