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Super cool! Having spent so much time in Meet in the last months really makes me think about the future. We should have technology that outperforms face to face

Super cool! Having spent so much time in Meet in the last months really makes me think about the future. We should have technology that outperforms face to face meetings, rather than just getting as close as possible to the "real thing". Why can't I do the following: - see who's who (bio) - have pre-determined roles in the meeting (Mary is here as technical specialist on x.y.z.) - have a set goal, agenda and timers per section - have a feedback form after/during the meeting - have stats about the meeting (who was actively participating, maybe via gaze tracking or seeing whether the tab is in view). We're they speaking aggressively, friendly, etc. - give automatic feedback about your own sound quality (hey, you should really invest in a good headset) - allow in-system meeting notes, such as decisions made and actions to be taken. Maybe even automatic? - have voting / polls - give audible feedback (claps) rather than the wall of mute icons - have a button to add participants to the call if they are late (it would call their phone, pull rather than push). - sub-rooms and spatial audio are also a great idea But no, instead we get virtual backgrounds and the never ending "sorry, I was on mute". My prediction: In 5 years, online meetings will be so much better than they are today.

jpindar 6y ago
Many of those things already exist and are popular in virtual worlds and in social games. In software in general there's a lack of knowledge of what's already been tried. This looks like a great start though.
- AbenezerMamo 6y ago
  Definitely agree! League of Legends and TF2/CS:GO stand out as games that have a huge community that builds a lot of analytics tools for in-game activity data. Most times, the community tools are way more feature rich and comprehensive than game dev tools. Definitely a lot to learn from games
- jtwaleson 6y ago
  I've seen some demos of VR based virtual worlds and it's really really cool. Downside is not being able to see facial expressions, and no one I ever have meetings with has a VR headset.
  - lksslr 6y ago
    I already commented below, but that's pretty much what we are aiming at with https://laptopsinspace.de https://laptopsinspace.de It's not VR (on purpose), but instead it has facial expressions and some gaming feel to it
lyonlim 6y ago
The biggest challenge is background noise cancellation... it can severely degrade the quality of a group call. Most of the others can already be done... and in this case, embed of q&a/polls, document.. can be defaults when setting up a new call.
- jtwaleson 6y ago
  We run a pretty strict "mute when not speaking" policy and it's working very well. I think giving users automated feedback about the quality of their sound is a much simpler problem to solve. Not as sexy as AI powered noise cancellation, but I think it would be much more effective in the short term.
saeranv 6y ago
> - have stats about the meeting (who was actively participating, maybe via gaze tracking or seeing whether the tab is in view). We're they speaking aggressively, friendly, etc. This is one's dangerous. I'm actually finding it hard to think of a use case for this where it isn't abusive and oppressive.
- jtwaleson 6y ago
  Here's one: If you see high disengagement, you know you have to improve as an organizer or that the person should not have been invited.
  - ebalit 6y ago
    You can also ask participants for their feedback.
    - jtwaleson 6y ago
      Yes, but the point of all my suggestions is to make things automatic. Besides the feedback to the organizer part, there could be all kinds of stats about the meeting, compare to the stats of e.g. a sports game. If you have a pool of sales reps, and you want to help them improve, you can compare the stats: on average you ask 2 questions per call, while the average rep asks 10, etc.. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of nefarious use cases, but there are definitely positive ones as well.
      - ebalit 6y ago
        I can see the use cases, but the nefarious ones kind of obscure this prospect. Maybe the negatives could be mitigated by doing the automated analysis on the client and asking the users if they want to send the feedback, similarly to how crash reports for software are often done.
        jtwaleson 6y ago
        Yeah, that might be a good mitigation! It will never be perfect, but that's life ;)

jpindar 6y ago

Many of those things already exist and are popular in virtual worlds and in social games. In software in general there's a lack of knowledge of what's already been tried. This looks like a great start though.

AbenezerMamo 6y ago
Definitely agree! League of Legends and TF2/CS:GO stand out as games that have a huge community that builds a lot of analytics tools for in-game activity data. Most times, the community tools are way more feature rich and comprehensive than game dev tools. Definitely a lot to learn from games
jtwaleson 6y ago
I've seen some demos of VR based virtual worlds and it's really really cool. Downside is not being able to see facial expressions, and no one I ever have meetings with has a VR headset.
- lksslr 6y ago
  I already commented below, but that's pretty much what we are aiming at with https://laptopsinspace.de https://laptopsinspace.de It's not VR (on purpose), but instead it has facial expressions and some gaming feel to it

lyonlim 6y ago

The biggest challenge is background noise cancellation... it can severely degrade the quality of a group call. Most of the others can already be done... and in this case, embed of q&a/polls, document.. can be defaults when setting up a new call.

jtwaleson 6y ago
We run a pretty strict "mute when not speaking" policy and it's working very well. I think giving users automated feedback about the quality of their sound is a much simpler problem to solve. Not as sexy as AI powered noise cancellation, but I think it would be much more effective in the short term.

saeranv 6y ago

> - have stats about the meeting (who was actively participating, maybe via gaze tracking or seeing whether the tab is in view). We're they speaking aggressively, friendly, etc. This is one's dangerous. I'm actually finding it hard to think of a use case for this where it isn't abusive and oppressive.

jtwaleson 6y ago
Here's one: If you see high disengagement, you know you have to improve as an organizer or that the person should not have been invited.
- ebalit 6y ago
  You can also ask participants for their feedback.
  - jtwaleson 6y ago
    Yes, but the point of all my suggestions is to make things automatic. Besides the feedback to the organizer part, there could be all kinds of stats about the meeting, compare to the stats of e.g. a sports game. If you have a pool of sales reps, and you want to help them improve, you can compare the stats: on average you ask 2 questions per call, while the average rep asks 10, etc.. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of nefarious use cases, but there are definitely positive ones as well.
    - ebalit 6y ago
      I can see the use cases, but the nefarious ones kind of obscure this prospect. Maybe the negatives could be mitigated by doing the automated analysis on the client and asking the users if they want to send the feedback, similarly to how crash reports for software are often done.
      - jtwaleson 6y ago
        Yeah, that might be a good mitigation! It will never be perfect, but that's life ;)