Meeting room names
Oct. 22nd, 2015 05:11 pmContinuing from the "meeting rooms not named after theological concepts" conversation, pseudomonas linked to http://historylists.org/art/9-circles-of-hell-dantes-inferno.html
Let's see.
Pugatory
Dingdingdingding! We have a winner in meeting room names!
Greed, Fraud
Yep, definitely some corporate activities there.
Lust, Gluttony
Not exactly the purpose of meeting rooms, but undeniably meeting room activities sometimes :)
Heresy
Look, at this list...
Anger
strcpy
Violence
register_globals
Treachery
#define while if
actual best way of naming meeting rooms
I think the real problem here is being paralysed by too many choices.
You ideally want to avoid some of the most obvious names: numbering them is perfectly fine, but there are benefits to choosing more interesting names, it's fun, it still works if you swap some rooms, it distinguishes them from meeting rooms in other buildings. And there's a few other obvious mistakes to avoid. Don't choose names where there's a fixed number of them, or you'll get arguments when you extend them. Don't choose planets because they're a cliche. Don't choose rude words because they WILL piss off someone eventually. Don't choose names that are obviously bad as names (too long, sound similar to something else, etc)[1].
Basically choosing any random nouns that don't have those obvious problems is fine. Fun, even! But given a bunch of choices, it's easy to want to choose the BEST choices. And then you try to narrow it down. Are these the BEST POSSIBLE names? Are they sufficiently neutral?[2] Can we choose something that will really wow any clients?[3]
Whereas if you'd just chosen the second thing that popped into your head, it probably would have been fine.
Footnotes
[1] Thus far, I have resisted making any passwords to shared machines "I_Don't_Know_Ask_IT" or "All caps" :)
[2] One understandable reason for choice paralysis is that if you "just pick one" and it's a problem in some way, you have no good justification.
[3] This is where things start to go wrong :)
Let's see.
Pugatory
Dingdingdingding! We have a winner in meeting room names!
Greed, Fraud
Yep, definitely some corporate activities there.
Lust, Gluttony
Not exactly the purpose of meeting rooms, but undeniably meeting room activities sometimes :)
Heresy
Look, at this list...
Anger
strcpy
Violence
register_globals
Treachery
#define while if
actual best way of naming meeting rooms
I think the real problem here is being paralysed by too many choices.
You ideally want to avoid some of the most obvious names: numbering them is perfectly fine, but there are benefits to choosing more interesting names, it's fun, it still works if you swap some rooms, it distinguishes them from meeting rooms in other buildings. And there's a few other obvious mistakes to avoid. Don't choose names where there's a fixed number of them, or you'll get arguments when you extend them. Don't choose planets because they're a cliche. Don't choose rude words because they WILL piss off someone eventually. Don't choose names that are obviously bad as names (too long, sound similar to something else, etc)[1].
Basically choosing any random nouns that don't have those obvious problems is fine. Fun, even! But given a bunch of choices, it's easy to want to choose the BEST choices. And then you try to narrow it down. Are these the BEST POSSIBLE names? Are they sufficiently neutral?[2] Can we choose something that will really wow any clients?[3]
Whereas if you'd just chosen the second thing that popped into your head, it probably would have been fine.
Footnotes
[1] Thus far, I have resisted making any passwords to shared machines "I_Don't_Know_Ask_IT" or "All caps" :)
[2] One understandable reason for choice paralysis is that if you "just pick one" and it's a problem in some way, you have no good justification.
[3] This is where things start to go wrong :)