Laptops in the Room: When 'Bring Your Laptop' Kills the Meeting

We accept 'bring your laptop' as neutral meeting hygiene, then wonder why we left with no decisions and three half-finished tasks. In this ten-minute monologue Dr Disruptor performs a forensic audit of the laptop-in-meeting ritual: what it promises (note-taking, readiness) versus what it usually delivers (split attention, performative busyness, and invisible task dumping). The Survivor supplies humane, immediately usable tactics: three diagnostic signals that devices are wrecking outcomes; a triage flow to choose Device-Productive (shared doc + focused role), Device-Limited (phones off, one laptop for scribe), or Device-Free with a clear ticketing follow-up; and three paste-ready scripts to propose a device policy that preserves dignity and output. Listeners leave with a two-week 'Screen Reality' pilot plan and a CTA to visit the show site to download the 'Laptops in the Room' one-pager with templates, calendar copy, and tonal script variants. May your coffee be stronger than your mission statement.