As if Productivity Score wasn't creepy enough, Microsoft has patented tech for 'meeting quality monitoring devices'
- Reference: 1606833010
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/12/01/microsoft_meeting_insight/
- Source link:
One that has popped up recently concerns a " [1]Meeting Insight Computing System ", [2]spotted first by GeekWire , created to give meetings a quality score with a view to improving upcoming get-togethers.
It all sounds innocent enough until you read about the requirement for "quality parameters" to be collected from "meeting quality monitoring devices", which might give some pause for thought.
Productivity Score relies on metrics captured within Microsoft 365 to assess how productive a company and its workers are. Metrics include the take-up of messaging platforms versus email. And though Microsoft has been quick to insist the motives behind the tech are pure, [3]others have cast more of a jaundiced eye over the technology.
Meeting Insights, should it progress beyond the patent stage, looks set to double down on things.
Microsoft has been working on calendars cluttered with meetings for some time. Last month it added insights into Teams via Stay Connected and Protect Time experiences, designed to keep workers, er, focused. Stay Connected, [4]it said , "will also make it easy to schedule meetings related to work, fun or wellbeing — or all three."
Meeting Insights would take things further by plugging data from a variety of devices into an algorithm in order to score the meeting. Sampling of environmental data such as air quality and the like is all well and good, but proposed sensors such as "a microphone that may, for instance, detect speech patterns consistent with boredom, fatigue, etc" as well as measuring other metrics, such as how long a person spends speaking, could also provide data to be stirred into the mix.
And if that doesn't worry attendees, how about some more metrics to measure how focused a person is? Are they taking care of emails, messaging or enjoying a surf of the internet when they should be paying attention to the speaker? Heck, if one is taking data from a user's computer, one could even consider the physical location of the device.
While the idea of an in-person meeting may seem wonderfully quaint nowadays, the concepts detailed in the patent just might worry privacy campaigners who regard Productivity Score with concern. Should the ideas contained within come to fruition (and there is no guarantee they will – Microsoft has many, many patents to its name) one can but hope that the algorithm's output will assist in stomping on meeting culture rather than the hapless attendees themselves.
A Microsoft spokesperson sent us a statement: "We apply for many patents to protect the hard work of our engineers. However, the application of a patent doesn't necessarily indicate that the technology described will be implemented in a product."
Talking to The Reg , one privacy campaigner who asked to remain anonymous said of tools such as Productivity Score and the Meeting Insight Computing System patent: "There is a simple dictum in privacy: you cannot lose data you don't have. In other words, if you collect it you have to protect it, and that sort of data is risky to start with.
"Who do you trust? The correct answer is 'no one'." ®
Get our [5]Tech Resources
[1] http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220200358627%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20200358627&RS=DN/20200358627
[2] https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-patents-technology-score-meetings-using-body-language-facial-expressions-data/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/26/productivity_score/
[4] https://news.microsoft.com/features/new-tools-can-help-boost-wellbeing-soothe-unexpected-stresses-working-from-home/
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Bzzzt
Bzzzt! John Spartan, you are fined 100 credits
So when Mr Shouty spends all the time spouting and everyone else shuts down as they can't get a word in, I wonder who it sees as the key people at the meeting ?
What happens when someone takes an important phone call about the huge order / loss of a family member / any of thousands of other exception cases ?
If you want drones to work for you, then the chances are that I don't want to work for you. You also need to recognise that innovation comes from people being individual and having different skills, so hitting them with the same productivity hammer doesn't work.
Person X answers the call 50 times a day - keeps customer happy
Engineer Y designs solution for next 50 years and provides a huge revenue stream as a result
Accountant Z spends all their time looking for ways to cut costs and cripple the company whilst looking like he's saving today.
Who is your strongest staff member ? How would you prioritise them ? How do they all work in meetings ?
Utter tripe to assume that this can be handled by magic fairy dust software even when you do stick the bulshit bingo words into it.
AI, ML, productivity, monitoring, future proof
Better add blockchain and encryption too for good luck.
Oh and if you want improved productivity, cancel half of the meetings and get rid of the constant interruptions with various IM technologies so that we can get on with the real work.
It will not catch on
Just apply it to any senior management presentation to the masses and it will show a negative score for the manager.
I used to attend information calls, where senior managers would tell us 'commodities' (for that is how we were seen) what they thought was going on and how 'we' were doing. Sometimes in over half an hour of spoken presentation, had I not already known, I would not know what business we were in from what had been presented*.
Then there was the manager who used to have telephone conferences starting at 10:00 in the morning. We had an hour break for lunch at 12:30, then two hours break at 5pm to get home then continue until 10:00 in the evening (yes, Bob, I am looking at you). Complete wast of time, on more than one occasion, twice in one week too :o( .
And, if course the 'valued customer' who insisted on project update calls at 5:00pm every weekday (yes, including Fridays), who never actually did anything at all except arrange and attend meetings and conference calls. Curiously the project actually began to make some progress when he left...
As the software guessing the 'productivity 'of the meeting cannot possibly check that any decisions made are not changed later, it will be a complete waste of time. But really useful for the 'Management Consultants' going on about 'Productivity scores', 'Organisational Health Index', or whatever the buzzwords are now.
Just as long as it does not eavesdrop on the IM comments us 'commodities' pass between ourselves (my personal favourite being the head banging against a wall) commenting on the contents, weather, or likelihood of survival of the manager / project / company in the near future, it might be ok, I suppose.
*Telecommunications and IT system integration as it happened.
"Metrics include the take-up of messaging platforms versus email "
A measure of productivity? More like a measure of broken governance, as Equifax found out the hard way: " From July 29 to September 15, 2017, Equifax considered Lync messages as disposable under its document retention policy even though they contained substantive communications about the data breach “recorded in the course of company business activity. ” [ [1]US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Equifax breach report pp 64-67 ]
The true measure of meeting productivity is material results . However on that basis most meetings I've attended at all levels from international to SMB would score zero (or even less).
But quite apart from this, I wonder how much of the "information" gathered will finish up at Redmond. Business meetings should be considered confidential by default, particularly from self-avowed data accumulators.
[1] https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/majority-and-minority-staff-report_-how-equifax-neglected-cybersecurity-and-suffered-a-devestating-data-breach
More utter BS from MS
If during a technical meeting I speak with a slow vocal cadence while firing off emails as part of to the ongoing discussion do I get a poor 'focus' score?