Parand Darugar

Parand Darugar's Blog I was at SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo last week preparing for my talk and observing my fellow attendees. Interesting stuff. The gentlemen seated on either side of me at the last talk were Japanese. As I fumbled around with my Blackberry and iPhone while trying to get Wifi to work on the laptop and reading email, I noticed the rapt attention paid by these gents to the speaker. Both listened attentively and took photos of every slide with their ever-present digital cameras. One took copious notes while the other not only took notes but also recorded the audio. This has me wondering - are the Japanese simply better listeners that we are? Are they less afflicted with crackberry syndrome? Or does the fact that they had to fly half way around the world to attend a conference naturally orient them to paying more atten... (more)