Tour de table

A topical moment of any institutional meeting, it’s the process of asking all the participants to briefly introduce themselves, usually answering the following questions:

  1. What’s your name?
  2. In which Directorate/Unit do you work?
  3. Why are you involved in this meeting?

Usually nobody listens to the others, because they are all busy trying to answer point 3 in a credible way. Funny answers like: “I had nothing else to do”, “I’m here for the free coffee”, “My boss didn’t want to join so s/he sent me” have been classified as lame since Walter Hallstein’s presidency.