A Distributed Meeting Primer

https://randsinrepose.com/archives/a-distributed-meeting-primer/

by mooreds • 7 years ago

129 23 7 years ago

aantix2• 7 years ago

I have a neighbor that owns a consultancy. They've started shipping the Meeting Owl videoconference camera to all of their high profile clients.

I personally haven't used it, but he spoke highly of it. I think the intelligent focusing of whomever is talking looks interesting. Certainly looks better than those "cameras in the sky looking down" views that are typical to most office setups.

https://www.owllabs.com/

P.S. No I'm not an investor, owner, or anything. Just a product that seems to take a different approach to remote meeting presentations.

kryptn• 7 years ago

We have a couple owls in our office for the remote and wfh folks, I think they work really well!

They sound good, both in the room and on a call. The video quality is good and the whole focusing on the active speakers is pretty nifty.

It doesn't really help with whiteboard discussions, it can be hard to keep it focused on the whiteboard. We've ended up just tapping the whiteboard to get it to focus.

aantix2• 7 years ago

Apparently they just released a pro version with a better 360 camera and mics. In q2 there suppose to have better tech for focusing on the whiteboard. https://www.owllabs.com/meeting-owl#smart-meeting-rooms

bsder• 7 years ago

They've started shipping the Meeting Owl videoconference camera to all of their high profile clients.

Um, that would be a great way to spy on your clients ...

pridkett• 7 years ago

Maybe I’m missing something here, but the Meeting Owl just shows up as a Webcam and doesn’t directly connect to the videoconference. There is a network interface, but it’s absolutely not needed. The beauty of the device is that there are no drivers needed and it works with everything.

Now, I supposed you _might_ be able to find a way to cram extra electronics for surveillance in there, but you’re probably better off creating a fake thermostat and sticking it to the wall.

kareemm• 7 years ago

One of my clients has one. They’re all in a conference room and I’m remote in another city. I’ve had remote clients and my own companies since 2007, and the owl is by far the best videoconferencing solution I’ve used. 10/10 would recommend.

AceJohnny22• 7 years ago

This is very nice, and I've shared it with some colleagues.

I've dealt with distributed meetings my whole career, and it's ranged from "wall-pounding waste of time" to just "meh". My current job has a pretty great system, but the weak spot remains WebEx, with people not muting by default or forgetting that they're on mute.

This article is a good list for any host/moderator to enforce.

acheron9383• 7 years ago

Lol WebEx is always the weakspot. Push to talk by default would be a nice add.

AceJohnny22• 7 years ago

From what I've observed, a large proportion of my colleagues would fail even harder -_-

macrael• 7 years ago

here's my suggestion: If anyone in a meeting is calling in, kill the conference room and everyone get on zoom. We are a mostly distributed company, so it makes obvious sense for us, but even early one when only some folks were not present, we switched to everyone being on zoom or no one being on zoom and it make everything better.

fyfy18• 7 years ago

I'll also add that Zoom (even for just audio) is lot more reliable than Slack in my experience.

chasedehan2• 7 years ago

One screen, One face

That’s really the only way to do it. Any other situation where there are people looking face to face and someone else on a screen makes it not fully collaborative. People are naturally more inclined when there is someone they can look eye to eye.

My company is ~50% remote (or distributed) and our all hands are with every person on their own laptop. Some people in the office pushed back, but we went this direction with zoom where you can have up to 100 people on the screen at 1 time and it has been incredible. Plus, you don’t have to set up any a/v equipment because the meeting link is in the calendar invite.

truebosko• 7 years ago

This is something we've been practicing as we go distributed and I couldn't agree more. Placing everyone on equal planes in these situations is incredibly important in giving each individual the ability to communicate.

foxbarrington• 7 years ago

How do you avoid feedback and other audio issues for people in the same room?

joeblubaugh• 7 years ago

We use headphones for everybody. Laptops do a good job avoiding feedback

rtpg• 7 years ago

Mute button + headphones

theNJR• 7 years ago

Had a meeting today where three were in an office together and I was remote on Zoom. Very sub-optimal setup. I like your philosophy.

lucb1e• 7 years ago

I think this might benefit my company, we are 2-3 in the office and 2-3 remote (each working from home) for practically every meeting.

I'm pretty sure it'll not be accepted though, I'm trying to figure out why I feel that way. Maybe it feels rude? Maybe because we've always done it this way? Maybe because we do have special equipment for it that should work fine? I'm not sure which weighs how heavy or if there is one main reason. People never expressed much friction but I'm convinced that a measurable percentage of words are just lost that wouldn't be in real life.

Edit: I should add that none of us are speaking their native language (Dutch, German, Spanish, sometimes Italian, with reasonable English as common language). It's hard to improve everyone's English significantly without large investment but the meeting can at least facilitate communication in the best way possible. /edit

Do you have any thoughts on how to approach this? Maybe we should try both alongside for two weeks and ask the remotes which they found worked better, or something else?

chasedehan2• 7 years ago

Remote people will 100% like each person on their own computer better. No question.

It is the people in the office who will resist.

What you need is someone senior enough to be outspoken and champion it. Luckily for us, a number of people on the executive team are at least partially remote so it was relatively easy to convince to do this.

JoeAltmaier• 7 years ago

More! Everybody stay at their desks, and all use conferencing software. If there are 10-20 people in the home office in one room, they're going to have their own meeting right there, while the 'distributed' folk struggle to understand who's talking, struggle to hear folks far from the mike, can't see their face because they turn away from the camera.

I've worked in a company that's tried it both ways, and the only way that really worked was for everybody to just stay in their office. Not only an equal experience for everybody, but a better experience. Everybody can share a document if needed! Everybody can write on the vitual white board. Everybody can talk.

throwaway77330• 7 years ago

Remote (or distributed) worker at a company mostly in a single building. I wish I was worried about the stuff in this article. I’m just lucky when I don’t have to beg for a call in number.

After a bunch of terrible calls with antiquated desk phones on speaker, I asked to have some of the conference phones in the main building upgraded just to the poly on conference phones (couple hundred dollars each). Was told no. So instead we waste way more money with expensive engineers trying to make out what is being said.

All video cameras on company equipment are disabled. By corporate policy, they previously only worked on skype, which is only internal to the company. When I asked why they were disabled, I was told that it was to protect proprietary information. Everyone carries around a personal cell phone capable of transmitting video to anywhere in the world and that is okay, but locked down company hardware that can only transmit in company is too much of a risk.

I asked for a few small surface hubs to do video conferencing on, and was told no. Then they spent more money to buy one big one and put it by the executives, with restrictions on who can use it, so it is never used.

I could keep going.

latchkey• 7 years ago

I work with a small team of 5 that is distributed all over the world (Vietnam, NYC, Abu Dhabi, Hungry). Every weekday, for the past year, we have a meeting using Zoom. This is by far the best software and we've standardized on it for all of our meetings, even with outside contacts.

One interesting thing we've taken to is not using video. I don't know why, but it works better to just hear voices. We are cautious to not talk over each other, even if it gets passionate.

We are very careful to mute ourselves after talking to prevent any sort of feedback as well as keep outside noise down. I've found that wearing headphones with my laptop mic works best.

We also have a policy of being on time. It is very rare for us to show up even one minute late. In fact, I just show up early and wait a few minutes on hold.

Out of band started with Slack and for some reason has moved to a whatsapp group... I don't really know why and haven't really bothered to figure it out.

perlpimp• 7 years ago

Team can be distributed or not, every time someone is on outside they are missing non-verbal communications. What I read in the article are a bunch of crutches and to seriously fix this make everyone remote, even if in the same office. Or make meetings onsite. Everything else will seriously undermine good fabric of the meeting, so sit back at your machines and be remote. Granted, sometimes people are sick and can't attend of whatever reason meatspace meets - same holds, they will be excluded from some communication. my 2c.

A Distributed Meeting Primer

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