Very Accurately Quoted in BBC’s “Forget standing meetings, try this instead”

Forget standing meetings, try this instead, via @BBC_Capital

“The most boring thing is sitting in a room and staring at someone for half an hour,” said Eytan. “If you tell me it’s a walking meting, it’s overall a bright spot in the day.”

The quotes, including the one above, are accurate. The one correction is that the Center for Total Health is not in Vancouver, Canada. I was however, walking in Vancouver, Canada, during the interview (part of the amazing KP Lantern project).

You can’t have a conversation about walking meetings unless you are actually walking of course, and Vancouver is one of the best places in the world for that anyway.

And I’m being serious when I say I was very accurately quoted above, because I actually lived that very experience just few weeks ago. I was invited to participate in a scientific roundtable hosted by the American College of Sports Medicine (@ACSMNews) and the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy (@KPIHP), and when my role was described, there was no walking involved. I am a huge fan of the ACSM (and KPHIP) and I think they sensed my frown on the other end of the telephone receiver. Then suddenly the frown turned upside down once they said I could absolutely convert the agenda time I was being asked to lead into a walk. It was like the skies cleared and a double rainbow showed itself.

And…we did the walk as prescribed. Not only did we do that one, but a few more walks were added to the agenda for the 2 days of the roundtable. We established that a roundtable doesn’t need to happen at a round table, or even at a table.

Here are the photos from our walks, which were with internationally recognized experts in physical activity. What a great way to interact with them.

Validation of my standing (pun intended) policy – if I can walk to it, I’ll do it :).

Thanks Alina Dizik (@Dizik) who walked with me during our interview (even though she was was somewhere far away), and for the BBC for publishing on this extremely important topic to my overall happiness.

2 Comments

Ted, you’re a British sensation! Bravo. Thanks for taking the message of physical activity while in the work place, overseas as well as state-side. Here’s to more double rainbows! 🙂

Mi Chelle,

We get by with a little Southern California Innovation :),

Ted

Ted Eytan, MD