Also the hallway conversation thing. Most of the time it’s small talk and minor social interaction, every now and then it’s critical out of band information that would not have shown up in normal processes.
To me it's a matter of fostering serendipity. and a bit ironic that research has shown conferences to be a great place for serendipity to take place, as that's what happened here.
I experienced this kind of situation, where only by chance conversation was a crisis averted, very much at my last FT. So much that I'm working on a startup for fostering serendipitous communication for remote teams, like private notes from coworkers left on stackoverflow questions (or anything on the web)
Probably inevitable these days given hallway conversations are going to be a pretty random thing. Of course, assumes someone needs to think something is important enough to put in chat and doesn't mind putting it out in public. (Ignore $XYZ project that other group is doing. It's got all sort of problems.)
I experienced this kind of situation, where only by chance conversation was a crisis averted, very much at my last FT. So much that I'm working on a startup for fostering serendipitous communication for remote teams, like private notes from coworkers left on stackoverflow questions (or anything on the web)