We've been talking lately here about tacit knowledge (about which, more later) and small talk and the limitations of online meetings and collaborations for casual conversation (which is sometimes where the most real progress gets made. Related to that, David Weinberger speaks 'In defense of small talk':

Likewise, in small talk, we express ourselves in the details of what we talk about, the words we use, the ones we don't, how far we lean forward, how tentatively or aggressively we probe for shared ground. Because all of this is implicitly presented, it tends to give a more accurate picture of who we are and what we care about than big, explicit conversations.