
This Meeting Has Cost.. (javascript ticker) - cypherpunks01
http://tobytripp.github.com/meeting-ticker/
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polyfractal
I find little timers like this crazy effective. When I switched to freelancing
fulltime, I built a little Gmail widget to help keep me motivated.

It shows my bank account balance, in real time, ticking down to zero based on
my monthly budget's burn rate. There is something uniquely motivating about
seeing your money slowly disappear as you check your email.

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zackattack
Post the source? edit: please integrate with RescueTime

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polyfractal
Here you go: <http://www.euphonious-intuition.com/runway2.xml>

It's dirt simple - I actually converted a "world population" widget into what
I wanted, hence some of the funny names. "Startpop" is your starting bank
account. "Poprate" is your burn rate per second. "Startdatepop" is the day you
start the counter.

For example, in my script I budgeted $1000/month, which works out to
$0.00038/s

Like I said, it's pretty crude. You have to routinely update both your balance
and the start-date to keep it accurate...but I've found just the idea of a
ticking balance is more powerful than what the number actually is.

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chime
Not all meetings are bad though and you cannot put a counter on meetings that
foster future growth or stability. Spending 30mins extra in a meeting could
resolve a major issue, helping the company beat competition - something that
you cannot put a dollar value on easily.

Just like there is an opportunity cost of having four senior staff sit in a
room for 45mins, there is an opportunity (benefit) for them to do something
that helps the long-term growth too. While I have been in many meetings that
were twice as long as they needed to be, I have also been in meetings that
went overtime but solved technical, inter-departmental, and operational
problems. Having a clock in those meetings would have been seriously counter-
productive.

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john_horton
Agreed - but I think there are enough unbalanced forces within most
organizations towards the "let's a have meeting" solution to problems that
this is making a "ha, ha, only serious" point that resonates.

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ch0wn
There's a hardware version of this which we use in the office:
<http://www.bringtim.com/>

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firefoxman1
Best footer ever:

"If this works in Internet Explorer, it is purely by accident."

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miniatureape
Nice. I made a version of this a while back when I worked at a design firm and
meetings went way too long:

<http://hurryupplease.com/>

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astrofinch
"This Hacker News visit has cost..."

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pawn
This reminds me of the 5 years-with-the-company speech I gave in front of a
large audience in a meeting that I thought had been going too long. Before the
speech, I calculated how many 15-second intervals I had been with the company
(approximately of course). So when it came time to give my speech, I asked
everyone to look at their watch for 15 seconds, noted that it felt like a long
time, then stated how many times that we were in the meeting and tied it up
with humor pointing out how much times that I had been with the company.
Laughs all around, but everyone got the joke that I was pointing out about the
meeting itself being long.

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Void_
Great idea!

Here's my take: <http://imgur.com/pWzra>

Source code: <https://github.com/vojto/cost-mac>

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jhammer
This is reminiscent of a similar "I can't believe how much time we're wasting
in this meeting" site that I made with some friends a couple years ago:

<http://meetordie.com>

If you click through and submit a meeting, you're rewarded with some clever
artwork making fun of the hot websites of the day (Facebook, Foursquare,
etc.).

Good for a laugh. It was fun to put together.

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ekianjo
This may be useful if you pay people by the hour, but in most companies with
fixed employees you just keep people on the payroll to make sure they are
available when you need it. Meeting costs become relevant when you have an
excess of work vs your capacity - then meetings go in the way of doing other
valuable things.

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dfc
$200 an hour is some pricey talent...

~~~
sneak
Not at all. It's a meeting of four people, each of them making ~$75k, which is
about half of what a skilled and experienced programmer (HN audience?)
commands these days.

You have to remember the employer's overhead, as well - things like office
space, computers, electricity, health insurance contributions, etc etc etc.

When you start talking about the HN crowd, it's a lunch meeting of two people
in the lobby of a pretty normal office.

~~~
gibybo
The 200 it suggests is per person. With 30% overhead, that would be $320k/year
for a full time job.

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radikalus
Awesome. Perhaps allow for annualized salaries?

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kondro
Meetings are about lost opportunity cost more than lost salary cost.

~~~
dfc
I was thinking along those lines too. In light of that facilities costs and
benefits are sunk/fixed costs and irrelevant...right?

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jaredstenquist
I built a site like this a year ago for Lawyers.

<http://www.lawyerclock.com>

Slightly more entertaining.

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jurre
I made one in excel a while back. Because people that love meetings love
excel. Let me try and find it!

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drivebyacct2
Ironically doesn't handle time differences well. Enter 12:40 (it's 2:40 here)
and see what happens.

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robwgibbons
Genius. Pure genius. Effective and funny as hell too.

