Would you use this?

[Nevin Freeman]

Service that works like so:

• You constantly indicate whether you are busy or free by tapping something on your phone or clicking button on computer. If you're into probabilistic automation, you can have it guess based on location, email account activity, your google calendar, whatever.
• When you want to talk to someone you tell the service that by selecting their name on your phone or computer or maybe speaking into your headphones.
• If they are "free" you are connected right away.
• If they aren't, the system just tracks that you are waiting. Next time you are both "free" you get connected (if you are close and talk a lot) or prompted to connect (the default).
• You can do this with as many people as you want, so if it's four it will just wait until all four are free.

The goal is to do away with scheduling meetings. I keep scheduling them and then thinking "I'm sure there are going to be like 6 times before then where we'll both have 10 free minutes."

Please poke to death and suggest completely different solutions to the problem if you have them :)

Nevin

[marc fawzi]

i was discussing something not too different just the other day ...

if the purpose of technology is to achieve higher efficiencies then a lot more than "free time" should be considered because efficiency is a function of many things not just free time utilization...

in fact, efficiency often requires the utilization of free cycles for subconscious/hidden/unknown physiological/biological/neurological processes... those free cycles are probably utilized by our genetic firmware to optimize our health, creativity, happiness and overall functioning

....

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[James DeMuth]

Nevin,

I completely agree with both of you, but perhaps it's me but I hate constant status updates, and if you are constantly updating that you are free/busy, aren't you wasting a ton of time just doing that? At my work (LLNL) we have a lab instant messaging system that tracks if you are at your computer (green icon means you're moving your mouse, yellow-inactive, red-in a meeting) and you can just ping whoever you want to talk to/see. Granted this doesn't work so well if you're not at your computer, but i think that's a pre-req of either system. I guess what I'm saying is could you have the free-busy signal be something that is auto triggered instead of having to actively engage it?

-James

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Nevin and James, 

This idea is great, tho may not work for all meeting types, as clearly some meetings require some prep work.  I agree with James on the update business, I think if this could be linked to your phone and computer the automatic, as  you say probabilistic automation, would be quit simple.  The user could enter in parameters for when he/she is generally available for conversation, and when they are busy and would not like to be bothered.  These parameters could also be programmed with level of importance, and you could rank people with some level of priority and those levels can be matched up with you level of availability. 

I like your general idea and it would be fun, however im not sure how much time it would actually save, you may just end up using more of your 'free time'  chatting with friends youve been meaning to catch up with 

Garrett

Garrett Fitzgerald 

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[Joseph Capoccia]

"Granted this doesn't work so well if you're not at your computer, but i think that's a pre-req of either system."

 for it to be effective, it should be integrated with all your devices. for me, a great time to catch up/quick convos is when i am driving. The only problem is the actual dialing (some may disagree, saying talking while driving is dangerous). So if your iphone, for instance, is able to detect when you are on the road, it would call all parties... similarly you phone can detect when you are on your computer and busy. but this might be more difficult to detect, as browsing reddit is not exactly productive.

great idea and i like the potential.

[Nevin Freeman]

Cool, thanks for the responses. I think the automation problem could be solved pretty well with some time and a learning algorithm. If you use all of the sensors available (iPhone's mic, computer mic, accelerometers, GPS, mouse/key activity, etc) and start with some untrained model at first, you can get feedback from the user each time a call is suggested. If the user often says no in some situation, the model updates. So the model is constantly computing the probability that the user is "free," and depending on the priority of a call and the free probability will be more or less aggressive about suggesting it. Model can be manually updated by user ("don't suggest calls when I'm at my girlfriend's or parents' house unless they are with people in group X"). I think this would lead to a lot of business calls happening late at night when everyone is up but doesn't think others are up.

As to the point about free time being useful for all sorts of subconscious processing, mental and otherwise: I do agree that there is a lot of subconscious processing that happens when showering, sleeping, washing the dishes, etc. The question this raises is: are you  doing the same kind of processing while talking to someone? I can se the answer being no, but can also see it being yes.

I do think this would lead to a little more catching up with friends, but as long as you have cool friends with good ideas that can help you think this might also be a boost in your ability to achieve in the long term :)

All this said, there's still the argument that this is not the best use of developer time for making productivity apps. Other ideas?

Lastly, for this to be something that happens, I would need to pay someone else to develop it since I don't have the time. I actually think I know the perfect person. But the question is, do we think people would pay for the service? And also, how valuable would this be if only three people you knew had it? I guess it could still just suggest calling people when it knows you are free to see if they'll answer. But I think the value goes way down then, so that means there is a gimungus chicken-and-egg problem to solve, and I'm not sure how to do that.

[Tim Sennott]

I generally agree this would be a handy tool, but one small caveat: I think we overestimate our own ability to plan our lives to perfection, to find the 'optimum'. I think in trying to hard to optimize our time or other aspects of our lives, we can easily fail by forgetting that the world is complex, and that good things often come out of unplanned situations. 

In this case, imagine that the tool is very good at filling in 'blank' spaces in our day. In many cases, this could be good. But it can have tradeoffs. Driving, for example, can also be a time when we unwind and process things, possibly fueling creative synergies or finding themes among events in our lives. Or walking to get lunch, we might encounter a colleague or a stranger, or have some other inteaction that might be useful. If we overplan too much, we can lose these things. 

I heard that Steve Jobs designed the pixar headquarters to have core facilities in the very center of the building, which annoyed a lot of people. food, bathrooms, mail, whatever. Everyone had to walk alot. But eventually they realized and profited from what he intended all along: spark many more chance encounters between people in different roles (engineers and artists and accountants). 

Anyway, NOT to say that there isn't an optimium we can plan for, but I think we have to take into account some level of spontaneity...

T

Tim Sennott
Mobile: 508.330.3796
Skype: timsennott

[Nevin Freeman]

I heard that Steve Jobs designed the pixar headquarters to have core facilities in the very center of the building, which annoyed a lot of people. food, bathrooms, mail, whatever. Everyone had to walk alot. But eventually they realized and profited from what he intended all along: spark many more chance encounters between people in different roles (engineers and artists and accountants). 

Similar to what Bell Labs was famous for!

[Tim Sennott]

Yeah, I am actually just reading a new book about Bell Labs right now, and it's pretty awesome. Testament to what a lot of smart people can do when they get together. Link below. Highly recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Idea-Factory-American-Innovation/dp/1594203288/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Nevin Freeman <nevin....@gmail.com> wrote:

I heard that Steve Jobs designed the pixar headquarters to have core facilities in the very center of the building, which annoyed a lot of people. food, bathrooms, mail, whatever. Everyone had to walk alot. But eventually they realized and profited from what he intended all along: spark many more chance encounters between people in different roles (engineers and artists and accountants). 

Similar to what Bell Labs was famous for!

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