In my team, often people don't even talk in form of group chatting. Everyone sits in their cube, without seeing each other, one may just throws out one or two short sentences about something that he just think of, an email he just received, or a story he just read on the Net. Then everyone else laughs or reponses and I, as you can image, got lost one way or another. THAT MAKES MELOOK REALLY STUPID.
So i need to know what is going on around me as a listener but not neccessary an audience. Simple, but hard.