I had to do a couple of "virtual" meetings for work yesterday. It was basically watching a powerpoint presentation over the web and listening to the people in the physical meeting over conference call.
And yes, as you suspect, the meeting was entirely excitement-free. To deal with the mounting monotony, whenever things became unbearably bland, I would log off of the online presentation, and then log back in again with a different name.
There was no need to truly identify myself, so I started out as Howard Gruber. About 15 minutes into it, I became Hamilton Smee. Then I was Rob Clamato for about ten minutes, at which point I logged in as Gordy "The Cat" Anderson. As things were wrapping up, Gordy logged off and MC WeaselFuzz joined the show.
I didn't think it was that big of a deal, assuming that no one except the presenter would ever see my names. However, it turns out that in the main, "live" meeting, the presenter's computer happened to be connected to a projector. So everytime someone new logged on, a little message popped up for everyone to see.
No biggie though. With some discreet questioning, I discovered that people didn't think anything of it. They thought the new attendees were actual employees. I guess people are much more accepting of difference than I imagined.
I guess I can go ahead and change my legal name to "Ambassador Biscuit." That's a relief.
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