4 ms·

My hunch though is that virtual meetings don't necessarily add new types of problems to real meetings, they just highlight the problems which already exist. If

My hunch though is that virtual meetings don't necessarily add new types of problems to real meetings, they just highlight the problems which already exist. If you have a meeting with 12 people, and most of them are not engaged, the problem isn't necessarily the video call, its more like the majority of those people shouldn't be in the meeting at all, and would just benefit from a written summary. If you have a meeting where 4 people are jumping in to share an opinion on one topic, that sounds like too many cooks in the kitchen, not a video call problem. From my experience with remote meetings, the ones that work the best are those between two or three people where everyone is informed and the subject of discussion is concrete. These kinds of meetings are just as productive as the real thing. The kinds of meetings that tend to not be productive are the ones that have a dozen people in the call, with a few people talking and the rest watching the clock until the hour is over. These kinds of meetings are a drag in the real world as well.

crazygringo 6y ago
Yes, 1-1 or 1-1-1 remote meetings are not too bad, especially for 1-1-1 if you can view both other participants simultaneously and latency is not too bad (e.g. New York to SF, not New York to Japan.) But my comments are assuming, say, a 12-person meeting that has to happen. For reviews/approvals of a project with 10 stakeholders, it simply has to happen. And I never said anyone wasn't engaged -- participants usually are. And 4 people having an opinion is the norm, absolutely not too many cooks. Just think -- a small feature idea is presented for approval in order to start work, a designer sees a potential problem, the user researcher realizes a use case was left out, the engineer is worried about feature creep, and marketing doesn't know if it'll be easy to explain. All of these have to be addressed. So I'm highlighting that even when everything about the meeting is necessary and otherwise awesome and productive, the limitations of remote participation can add substantial difficulties to running it effectively. And that in this sense remote meetings are in no way "solved" yet.

crazygringo 6y ago

Yes, 1-1 or 1-1-1 remote meetings are not too bad, especially for 1-1-1 if you can view both other participants simultaneously and latency is not too bad (e.g. New York to SF, not New York to Japan.) But my comments are assuming, say, a 12-person meeting that has to happen. For reviews/approvals of a project with 10 stakeholders, it simply has to happen. And I never said anyone wasn't engaged -- participants usually are. And 4 people having an opinion is the norm, absolutely not too many cooks. Just think -- a small feature idea is presented for approval in order to start work, a designer sees a potential problem, the user researcher realizes a use case was left out, the engineer is worried about feature creep, and marketing doesn't know if it'll be easy to explain. All of these have to be addressed. So I'm highlighting that even when everything about the meeting is necessary and otherwise awesome and productive, the limitations of remote participation can add substantial difficulties to running it effectively. And that in this sense remote meetings are in no way "solved" yet.