Saving Face

We Convene editors all work remotely from our homes, but lately we've been seeing a lot of each other -- at a sales and editorial conference in Chicago a month ago, an editorial retreat in North Jersey the week before last, and editorial closing for our April issue in Manhattan yesterday and today. We'd only been sitting around the table at our design studio for a few minutes yesterday morning when Hunter Slaton, one of our senior editors, looked up from the page-proofs stacked around him and said he wished we had more time to just talk -- because when the four of us are together, the ideas fly pretty quickly, especially when we don't have a set agenda.

This is our own version of "Face Time. It Matters." More than that, it speaks to the importance of not just face time but unstructured face time -- the kind that respects the power of serendipity, so you don't know who you're going to run into or what you're going to talk about. Do you allow for that at your meetings and conferences? And, while it sounds paradoxical, can you formally schedule it? Can you plan for unplanned experiences?