Communication patterns for senior developers [closed]

Question

I've been running a weekly "tech lead" meeting at our company for several months. It's become quite mundane, and more of a status update than anything else. I'm looking for ideas to make this more dynamic:

• These are the guys who I think can generate great ideas and vision
• They also have depth no one else has in a particular domain and body of code/architecture
• This is one of the few chances they have dedicated time to interact with each other, so I want to make that as productive as possible

I'm an engineer, not a manager, but it seems like a waste of talent to have these guys sitting around for an hour telling me what they did last week. To make it even more difficult, there are folks that dial in from remote locations as well. I was hoping make it something less formal, like a whiteboard discussion party, but not sure how much structure would be needed. If you've ever read "A Beautiful Mind", I'd like something akin to the afternoon tea parties they had at Princeton where they talked math on the chalk board.

Answer 1

I think the challenge is to keep everybody engaged. Set time aside for presentations that the tech leads can volunteer for, and let them submit subjects. Ask them to present projects that are reaching an important milestone. Use webex to do this online for the remote people. Do you need Weekly meetings, or can you do them bi-weekly? That could help, too.