Finding on Chat Side Channel
A meeting is in progress. Someone types a reaction in the chat instead of saying it. The meeting continues as if both occurred.
Finding: Chat Side Channel Counterfactual Analysis, July 2022
What Occurred
During a scheduled meeting, a participant typed a reaction in the meeting chat rather than speaking the same sentence aloud. The reaction was: "lol agree." The speaker saw the chat and said "thanks." The meeting continued.
This document considers what would have happened if the reaction had been spoken.
Counterfactual A: The Reaction Is Spoken
In the counterfactual where the typed reaction was instead said aloud: the meeting would have lasted approximately the same amount of time and contained approximately the same amount of information. The speaker would have said "thanks" in the same tone. No material outcome would differ.
The participant who typed would have needed to unmute. Unmuting takes approximately two seconds. Remuting takes another two. The typed version took approximately the same time to compose, plus the delay for the speaker to glance at the chat panel, which the speaker does approximately every forty seconds regardless of whether anything appears there.
What the Typing Accomplished
The typing accomplished participation without the performance of participation. This is valued. It is also slightly confusing to everyone, including the person who valued it.
The call is meant to simplify coordination, yet everyone spends energy managing how participation looks. The chat panel provides a second layer of participation management, which is itself a coordination surface that must be managed, which is the opposite of simplification.
The Governing Rule
Meeting etiquette is valid whenever enough people copy a behavior before anyone names it. The chat side channel was not invented by any single participant. It arrived because some calls had chat panels and some participants used them, and eventually the behavior redistributed into all calls regardless of whether the format required it.
Nobody has agreed to it. It is agreed to.
Consequences
After repetition, participants began structuring contributions by medium: formal points aloud, reactions in chat, private concerns in direct message during the call. The call now runs three simultaneous layers of communication, all of which are considered part of the meeting, none of which are captured in the same place.
The minutes document the spoken portion. The chat is sometimes saved, sometimes not. The direct messages are not documented. An unknown quantity of meeting content exists only in the memory of pairs of people.
Status
The chat side channel continues. It is now the default for a certain class of reaction. Nobody can name which class. They know it when they type it.