Secondhand Skype

RantWoman missed it. RantWoman was nowhere to be seen during the plenary at the Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting plenary about use of electronic communications and Quakers. RantWoman thus has been consuming the plenary secondhand. It occurs to RantWoman to wonder whether anyone thought to make an electronic record of the session, but RantWoman is getting into enough trouble demanding that people speak their OWN Truth and not assume they are speaking for everyone.

RantWoman for her part was doing her work shift as one of several adults taking care of dozens of children. Having so many children at Quarterly is wonderful. And too much of wonderful can be, well, too much. RantWoman's too much threshold is lower than other people's but Quarterly Meeting is blessed by VERY good childcare planners. The person in charge of RantWoman's age group, first thing, made sure all 19 of our charges had nametags. RantWoman completely sees the logic of this even though RantWoman of course could not interact. The charges also were a mite too young to read RantWoman's UnNameTag request to "PLEASE TELL ME YOUR NAME." But never mind, this was a great help to other adults on the scene and everyone was quite forgiving when RantWoman hung some of the day's art efforts up upside down on the wall.

But back to secondhand Skype.

RantWoman in her peculiar way is an overachiever about matters electronic. For instance here is RantWoman on Skype from a long time ago,

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-rantwoman-is-one-who-needs-video.html


And again
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/04/another-day-at-office.html


The search bar will yield a couple other items, but RantWoman imagines her readers get the idea.

RantWoman has the impression that discussions at the gathering left plenty of room for people's different experiences, but RantWoman really does not know what to do with the checkin offering paraphrased below:

One friend "It just made me think in-person is the best way to communicate."

RantWoman: "Why do you say that?"

Friend "Well, the people Skyped in were talking about something they had all attended together, but we don't have time to talk anymore in person because we have to stick to the agenda."

RantWoman, thinking about the part left out of the queries about who is in and who is out of electronic--or other--conversations, thinking about her motley assortment of powerful internet and blogosphere connections, thinking about when she does and when she does NOT want to deal withhours and hours of mysticism aboard Metro, thinking about the part about what practices do people use to stay centered...: "Huh? Are we ever going to have time to talk about when email actually WORKS?"