Reflection on Meeting
I have a team for CG1102 comprising of Rayner and Junius. We met on 11th February at 11am at COM1 Level 2. The meeting was mainly to discuss the design for the assignment and the required coding part. We sat in a tutorial room to do our video recording which can be found here on Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKk3PdwtAM
The meeting was really fun for the 3 of us, because we all bond well and can understand each other. We formed the basic structure of the lab assignment and then sat down to code. With my previous experience in coding in a team, I realised it is quite helpful if the programmers sit together and code on a single machine. One guy can just keep typing the program and the logic runs in everybody's head. So there are immediate suggestions and immediate implementations of all the good ideas from 3 brains. And moreover ideas are also thrashed if they are not good. This not only results in team bonding, but an awesome code.
Though this method of coding together works good in our team, it definitely will not work for bigger programs and bigger codes, as people might need to divide the work and then do it. Our meeting turned out to be a success as we could build the basic structure of the idea and also look up (google) many stuff that we were unsure of.
On seeing the video, I think it was really good that we all worked together and listened to each other's ideas and then implemented them collaboratively.
Apart from that, I also have a few comments regarding the CG1413 meeting. We usually meet online and discuss stuff on a collaborative tool - etherpad.com
Etherpad is a collaborative notepad with built in mulit-user chat. It is damn easy to use and is real-time (updates other people's copy character-by-character). We are taking full benefit of collaborative research. And I would like to suggest each and everybody working in a team to use such products. Even Google Wave is good and I use it for my other module teams, but it is a bit laggy. Etherpad is simply awesome.
Posts
Hi Angad,
I am happy that the 3 of you had a most enjoyable and productive CG1102/CG1143 meeting. :)
Rayner had mentioned that he had looked angry most of the time when he was thinking. I'm glad that it didn't come across to you as anger. :) Maybe he was being a little too self-conscious? :p
Anyhow, I had watched your video and feel that you guys did a fabulous job. :) You guys maintained much eye contact during the discussion and constantly smiled at each other. :) This helps put the team at relative ease with each other and to ease the tension during an otherwise serious discussion.
Keep it up and I'm sure you guys will be on your way to success! :)
Yours sincerely,
Juncheng Chen
P.S. For those who don't have the link to the video... Here! :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKk3PdwtAM&feature=related
Hi Angad,
It's great that your meeting was productive and went off without any problems.Your choice of venue was good and after watching the video,I feel that your team has managed to discuss the program effectively.Keep it up:)
Cheers,
Meenu
Hi Angad,
Firstly, i'll like to congratulate you on the successful meeting. Especially if its the first :)
I believe most of us have never had a actual recorded meeting before. What's important about these recordings is that we learn more about ourselves when we are interacting with others.
I hope you gained as much feedback from your evaluation on yourself as I did.
Good Luck for 1102 :)
Yours sincerely,
Junhao Quek, C04E
Hi Angad,
It's good that both 3 of you find the discussion interesting. It is important because when you find it interesting, you can participate more actively in the discussion.
In the video, I see that your group has a good non-verbal communication. You also smiles sometimes so that the discussion wouldn't be serious.
However, I think you put the camera a little bit far as I sometimes can't hear what you were talking about :D
Regards,
Tuan Vu
Dear Angad
Perhaps an explicit set of criteria to evaluate a good meeting should have been made clear from the beginning of the post.
Nonverbal behaviours as well as neogtiaiton skills are important. Did you fare well in these two aspects?
Thanks for the information on etherpad.com. I must find out more from you about the differences between this and the wiki.
Regards
Happy
I am late in replying here. :(
But no worries, its better to be late, than never. I think being late has given me a larger time slot to think about the comments and the recorded meeting. I realise that perhaps there should be a criteria on how a meeting should be rated as good. Definitely, if a meeting goes too smooth, it means all the team members are not too comfortable and are not thrashing out the ideas. All the ideas and thoughts must be thrashed to the maximum and then only accepted.
Perhaps our meeting went too smoothly. But I remember after the recorded meeting, and in later meetings we all thrashed down the concepts that we had decided and even made major changes to the plan.
Regarding the behavior of all the members, I think it was really good. We were not too concerned about the camera recording us and were not at all nervous. We kind-of had an agenda in mind - to discuss the structure.
In all it went well.
Hi Angad
I am late too, and I do agree with you. The longer time made me realise more. When I was watching the video while writing my reflection, I was merely looking at my flaws. When I saw the same video again while looking out for yours, I realised more of mine. I saw the feedback that I received from my actions during the meeting and this was really helpful.
A criterion for rating a meeting is a good idea. In fact, I suggest that we make use of an agenda to do so. The agenda will contain the things to be accomplished and beside each item, its’ duration assigned. The meeting’s success is then based on how well under time each item was completed. This has another advantage; we will be able to dissect the analysis and see which area in the meeting was the issue that requires more attention.