8 Things to Do With a Tablet PC During Meetings

Scoble has a post that references this post on the blog of Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, on 8 things you can do with a tablet PC during a meeting.  I've become more and more intrigued by the Tablet PC platform and hardware over the past few months, and can certainly see benefits in my daily work, but it's interesting to hear from someone that actually uses one at an executive level.  Here is Hyatt's list, visit his post referenced above for a more thorough description.

• Take notes.
• Enter tasks.
• Ask questions via e-mail.  Note that you need to be connected to the Internet somehow (hopefully via WiFi or 3G wireless) in order to accomplish this.
• Make assignments via e-mail.  See my note on wireless above.
• Look up information in computer files.  See my note above regarding wireless in reference to files on network drives.
• Look up information on the web.  See my note above regarding wireless.
• Respond to urgent messages.  See my note above regarding wireless.
• Keep my staff moving forward.  Via e-mail, which brings me back to the wireless thing again.

So interestingly, if your company does not have wireless or you do not have access to the Internet somehow, this list of 8 useful things is diminished.  I wonder about doing all this stuff during meetings; is the meeting really that important if you can get all this stuff done?  In my view, it is super-useful to be able to do a lot of this stuff outside of meetings without having to use the keyboard on my laptop.

On that last point, Hyatt says he is trying to move folks in his company towards Microsoft Messenger; I use instant messaging all the time as a very worthwhile alternative to e-mail, so I fully support that move.