Unconventional Communication

True story. A few weeks ago, I presented a paper at a conference in Chicago. It was a typical academic panel situation--four presenters, a chair, and a respondent. What was not typical, at least not in my experience, was the rude behavior of several individuals in the room. The source of this rudeness? New communication technology.

At one point during the paper presentations, a loud cell phone went off and, rather than simply turning it off, the audience member abruptly rose from his seat and rushed out of the conference room to take the call. Okay, I admit, this is not necessarily uncommon, but it gets worse. One of my fellow presenters insisted on delivering his paper off his laptop. He spent his entire 15 minutes staring at his computer screen, his face partially obscured from the audience's view. Then, during the question-and-answer session, Mr. Laptop literally would type out the questions as they were being asked, resulting in a quiet-but-still-amazingly-distracting clicking noise. And when he would ask a question of another panelist, he would, of course, type out the person's answer rather than engaging in actual eye contact with his professional peer.

The corker of the session, however, was the panel chair. For those not familiar with the ritual of academic conferences, the chair is the individual who introduces the panelists and panel topic to the audience. Needless to say, the chair should exhibit interest in and enthusiasm for the program that she's chairing. Well, our chair spent the entire 75 minutes...texting. Right in front of us and not even trying to hide it. Why should the audience listen when they see the panel organizer engaged in constant text messaging? Isn't that just wrong?

So, these wonders of our new communication technology age--cell phones, laptops, and texting--while all very useful, have really done a number on our ideas of appropriate communication behavior. Okay, so that's not a particularly fresh or revolutionary observation. However, the punch line to all of this, if you haven't guessed it yet, is that this ill-mannered behavior occurred at the annual convention of the...wait for it...National COMMUNICATION Association, an organization whose mission includes "the application of competent communication to improve the quality of human life and relationships." From what I witnessed at this year's NCA convention, we have a long way to go in achieving that mission. Or, as the kids would tweet, EPIC FAIL.