Online all the time

what do we lose?

UBC’s Board of Governors are meeting this week (Nov. 20-21, 2024). Gathering from our basement suites, front rooms, dining tables, home offices or workplaces the governors and members of upper management will meet online from around the province and across the city. You won’t see us anywhere near campus -unless we live or work here, but even then you’ll only see us as a tiny flickering image on your screen.

Since the pandemic many of us have acclimatized to online meetings. A lot of white collar work remains online. Popular media has gone back and forth about the productivity of online work. Most sources come down on the idea that some kind of hybrid work setting is about equivalent, sometimes better, than full on in person work. That kind of makes sense for employers whose primary concern is with their profit margins. Having a rotating schedule with less than the full complement of the workforce on site at one time reduces the need for bricks and mortar facilities. Having workers coming in some of the time keeps management eyes on them. Online surveillance and management systems can track off site workers. Home-based workers save commuting time. The home worker has a bit more autonomy to organize work/home life complementarity.

But how does this track for those making the decisions rather than being managed?

Does it matter that so many decisions made by UBC’s Board of Governors are done online?

Generic zoom tile display.

After the pandemic UBC’s Board brought back in person meetings for the full board session but kept committee meetings online. Streamlining of decision making has reduced the half day full board meeting to mostly consent agendas (which are not discussed, just passed in an omnibus resolution). Most everything else happens behind closed door in camera sessions that are - well, I can’t say as it would put me in violation of the code of conduct. What I can say is most of the decision making has been shifted to standing committees in which small groups of governors make decisions on behalf of the full board. There has also been a process of delegating more of the board’s decisions to the president’s executive team and thus out of the board’s immediate scope of work and oversight.

So what do we gain by holding the majority of board deliberations online? Efficiency seems to be the single biggest gain. Online committee meetings reduce side-to-side chatter (lateral chat feature is disabled), more exact start and end times, and a focus on the tightly scripted agenda. Governors can call in from home and avoid a half hour to hour commute (if they live in the lowermainland) or an overnight trip if they live in the Okanagan. They can focus on their young children or pets while keeping an eye on the meeting progress.

In the past committee meetings were a two day personal commitment. Governors would often sit in on committees they were not members of as it made more sense to do so than commute back and forth between UBC and their home or work. These ensured more governors than the small assigned group were aware and involved in committee deliberations. From zoom a governor can drop into their assigned meetings and drop out of the other meetings to attend to their personal affairs with little effort.

What we lose by meeting online is less tangible. It’s harder to measure quantitatively. Gone are the informal and accidental meetings among governors. It is no longer possible to chat with management outside of the formal public facing deliberative discussions. It’s not that these moments don’t exist, but they tend to follow the tendrils of well established lines of familiarity and power. New connections are hard to create outside the formalize discursive theatre of the meeting itself. There is no way to measure the exact loss here. What I can attest to is a certain loss of the human capacity to appreciate others in their variability and particularities. How can one relate to a face and a voice one only meets formally across a meeting table? How can we know that person as a person, not as a stock character?

As an anthropologist I have made it a life’s work observing human interactions as people build affective connections and shared meaning through communities of practice. Humans have many formal ways to build belonging, but some of the most effective have been the informal non-structured, moments of interaction. Working quietly alongside each other mending nets. Walking along alpine trails reflecting one one’s ancestors. Happenstance conversations alongside the margins of formal meetings.

I have worked across disparate cultural communities from Western Europe to the north coast of BC. Through this anthropological work I’ve noted the importance of ordinary informal human connections in reinforcing as well as transforming structures of power and belonging. So while I can’t quantify it, I can see and feel the importance of informal and casual gatherings. Despite the inefficiency we need to return to a more human-centred scale that being in person aaffords.