On the weekend I had lunch with a group of not-particularly-geeks. I mean, they might be geeks in their own fields, but they’re not the computery open-sourcey Perly type that I usually talk about geeky stuff with. So over our pho (I had the satay beef egg noodle soup, which was pretty tasty) I mentioned my recent urge to write about geek etiquette. As an example, I mentioned the fact that geeks at conferences all sit using their laptops right through the presentations.

“I hate that,” opined one of my lunch companions, who works in the public service. “It’s so rude. If they’re not paying any attention at all, what are they doing there?”

I did a double take, and then explained carefully.

Geeks multitask.

Not only do we multitask, but if experience is anything to go by, what many of use are doing while we’re staring at our laptop screens is sitting on IRC on a channel dedicated to the conference, and talking about the presentation in progress. Last summer, when everyone except me — or so it seemed — was at OSCON, I joined #oscon to keep up with what was happening. At YAPC::Europe in 2001, I remember at least one presenter putting the #yapc IRC channel up on the overhead projector so everyone — even those without WiFi, which wasn’t quite so ubiquitous then — could see the chat.

If we’re not running a sideband conversation about the presentation topic, we’re often googling for more information on the presenter’s topic, or downloading and trying out the code in real-time. Those of us who are presenting later on are probably working on our slides at the last minute, and those of us who are taking time off from work to attend probably couldn’t do so unless we kept up with our email. All worthwhile things, one might argue.

On the other hand, the one-day London Perl Workshop last December didn’t provide WiFi, saying (in their FAQ) “it’s rude to type during someone’s talk and when you’re out of talks you should be socialising :)”

So where does etiquette fall on this? Well, the purpose of a great deal of etiquette is to demonstrate consideration for other people. In this case, the main person you should be showing consideration for is the presenter. If you’ve ever been up there on that podium talking to a room full of people, you’ll know it’s easiest when they’re making eye contact and giving you live feedback. It helps you know whether you’re going too slow, too fast, or whether they’re excited or bored by your subject. So if you’re sitting in a presentation and multitasking, the minimum you should be trying to do is to look up at the presenter at least every minute or two.

If you’re multi-tasking around the subject of the presentation (discussing the subject on IRC, or googling for a technology the presenter mentioned, or whatever) this shouldn’t be too hard. You’re probably going to want to keep up with the slides in any case. Show you’re paying attention by asking intelligent questions during or after the talk, or chatting to the presenter in the hallway or over the complimentary muffins. It’ll help them get a feel for how their audience responded, and make them happy to present in future. It wouldn’t even hurt to send a followup email a few days later, telling the presenter you appreciated their talk.

If, on the other hand, you’re working on some other code, or reading email, or writing up the slides for a completely unrelated presentation, you’re probably not paying attention to the speaker, and can’t manage even the bare minimum of eye contact. In this case, get the hell out of the lecture theatre and go do your work in the hall or the lounge or your hotel room.

(All this, of course, assumes that you are staring down at your laptop and typing in silence. I hope I don’t need to mention that anything noisy — playing games, or mp3s, or talking to neighbours, or on your cell phone — is unconscionably rude to the whole room, not just the speaker, and should be taken outside immediately.)

The subject of WiFi at conferences is a new one. Five years ago, this was a non-issue, and five years from now this advice is going to sound as out of date as… huh, I can’t even remember what we were talking about five years ago, but I’m sure I’d laugh at it now.¹

The point here is that etiquette is an evolving system of social protocols, and what I think is valid here and now might be as irrelevant as WAP in five years’ time. Or gopher. Come to think of it, I liked gopher. I like the idea of visiting cards too. Take that as you will.

Note 1: Upon reflection, I realise that five years ago, the new cool thing at OSCON was Perl 6. OK, I’m laughing, but it’s a special kind of laugh.