It is July, the time of vacations, with the weather finally something other than wet. You seem to wait most of the year for this kind of weather and when it arrives it is nice.
The staff got the rest of their iPhones today so everyone was setting things up, getting a bit lost in menus and experiencing what all the hype of the past week is actually about. It comes with some limitations that’s for sure but overall it is a tribute to Apple and their ingenuity.
First and foremost it is a phone, SMS communicator, email device, calendar, address book….well you get the picture. What it does well is that it is an extension of the Mac OS in what you can do and it works together with what you have on the desktop. I think of it as a mobile extension of a pretty good OS. And then there are the things that seem like science fiction coming true like the map function that shows you as that pulsating dot moving across a map. Why would you need step by step directions when you just follow the purple line as a pulsating dot? With a hybrid map choice it is so simple and almost unreal. We are just starting to learn what it can do and are pretty sure that a few unanswered questions can be solved with what this device offers.
Yesterday Tim (Currency) and William (Vancity) and I got together downtown for lunch and to go over what is needed for BarCampBankBC. Those two are right on top of it and we are well on our way to putting up the framework to make this a memorable event. At one point I had the iPhone out to update the Twitter bunch. After a picture and some text I quickly looked at the SMS messages and email. While I was doing this Tim and William were discussing something and I realized that I had actually left the group for a few minutes by what I was doing. This morning after thinking about what I had done I thought it needed a name so I called that type of action ‘hiving’. It is made up of hive with the -ing. I thought of a bee hive and how busy they always seem to be doing something and yet they are in close proximity. When you have that iPhone or BlackBerry in the midst of people and are doing something with it you are busy, doing what is anyones guess. It seems we do need a verb for what is being done as it is becoming very commonplace. To hive – to be busy or have the appearance of being busy, always within the midst of people, with a small computer-like device.
Tinfoiling 
Yes, well, let’s try and keep that hiving to a minimum. It was great seeing you, and making more plans for BCBBC!
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The Twitterrific app for the iPhone is better than the desktop version!
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Weren’t you just “absent”, “somewhere else”, “out of reach”, “on the phone”, “talking to somebody else”, “doing something else”?
I see this all the time with people in meetings and it took some time to get used to. They’re effectively leaving the room for a few seconds or minutes and then come back in — all while staying in their seat around the table.
When somebody receives a voice call on their cell phone they always give off either obvious or subtle physical cues to your fellow group mates that you’re not “all there”, and the group dynamic changes accordingly — similar to if somebody came over and started a whispering conversation with them. Even headset talkers stare into space while they talk with the unseen person on the unseen cell phone, showing that they’re not taking part in the dynamics of their physical group.
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I am guilty of Hiving. And I never wanted to be one of “those people” always pulling out my iPhone and checking stuff. Damn you Monkey Ball!!
Seriously though – in my travels I see people communicating to no one all the time. Their borg-like microphones in their ears, pacing the Red Carpet Room, hands flying, words spewing forth, to no one in particular.
5 years ago, this person would’ve been feared. Thought insane, and probably eventually ushered away. In handcuffs.
Today, it’s business as usual.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……
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I’m going to buy an i-Phone and make a little shrine in which it will live, until my Crapberry® plan expires this December.
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I saw your blog through a Google Alert and wanted to tell you about my definition for hiving: buzzing around doing inventive things in groups, like bees in a hive. I have a website and a party group in LA that does these things (and gives proceeds to charity.)
Not quite what you’re talking about (though I’m familiar with that phenomenon, too!) — and I think that bees are really connecting with each other even though they seem in their own little individually buzzing worlds when they do that. So maybe a better one would be “i-tuning out?”
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your staff all got iphones? That’s it. I’m submitting my resume right now. (kidding. but I’m going to start a lobby group at CB for iphones!)
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