intertwingly

I have mild myopia and tinnitus.  Neither are much of an issue in close range, but each imply data loss and/or require extra concentration for picking up signals at a distance.  Normally, I compensate for this by choosing a seat up near the front and/or the middle of any grouping whenever possible.

However, in the current meeting that I am at, I found that all of the participants were given assigned seating.  And my seat turned out to be in a far corner.

Compensating for myopia is simple.  I have glasses which I typically only use for driving.  But the audio portions of the meeting are far, far more important, and quite frankly the acoustics in this room are lousy.  The situation is better when presenters use the microphone, and not an issue in breakout sessions, but crucial portions — such as the summarization of the first portion of the meeting — were done as an open discussion without any use of microphones.

Luckily for me, there is an official backchannel in this meeting.  Whereas my hearing loss is minor, one of the participant's hearing loss is far more acute.  So there is a person dedicated to taking official notes in realtime and this is done via IRC.  Others have the opportunity to listen in and/or contribute... something that has been important for the times where the note taker can't hear important points.

And based on the discussion in IRC, it appears that I am not the only person to note that it easier to read the summary in IRC than listen to the actual presentation.