+1 on keeping the terminal room a (mostly) quiet work area. Rather, let's replicate the Quebec large lounge space if possible (at all upcoming meetings). Cheers, Andy On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 9:25 PM, Worley, Dale R (Dale) <dworley@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> From: Paul Hoffman [paul.hoffman@xxxxxxxx] >> >> Instead, I propose that we simply designate the terminal room (which >> is already reserved for future meetings) be designated as meeting >> areas where talking is allowed / encouraged. Earplugs could be >> provided for people who really want a quiet Ethernet connection; the >> cost of those for the Secretariat will be about $25/meeting. > > I agree with Mary here, we really don't want to turn the terminal room > into a talking room. > > The problem with the earplug idea is that earplugs don't dampen human > voices to the point where they don't cause your brain to try to track > conversations, because earplugs uniformly cut the volume of both > voices and background noise. Since your brain's audio processing > system has an excellent AGC (automatic gain control), the recognition > of voices is unimpaired. > > Dale