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I fundamentally disagree. The reason synchronous video communication continues to dominate is because it's more information dense than text in many situations,

I fundamentally disagree. The reason synchronous video communication continues to dominate is because it's more information dense than text in many situations, and more interactive than asynchronous alternatives. Asynchronous communication has its place, and it's amazing what has been accomplished over the LKML and similar. Software projects tend to make this sort of communication ideal, since they are amenable to individualized contributions. But the prescription that efficient digital communication must be asynchronous and textual is incorrect.

n3storm 6y ago
I disagree. The reason is that some people is not educated in async or just lazy. It takes just one person that refuses to go async to make everybody use video. I heard it thousand of times: "let me call you cause I explain better by phone" No, you don't. You just use many resources to keep conversation going until you find terms and produce proper phrases. You could perfectly have elaborated this by your own and wrote it down in an email or chat group. Sorry this was deep inside me and had to come out :D
- t0mas88 6y ago
  I have the exact opposite observation: In my company developers/engineers over use chat (in this case Slack) and email compared to other groups which causes unnecessarily long discussions. It's great that it's async, it works very well for simple factual information, but it doesn't work for topics where not everyone agrees. Those drag out over time, and cause a lot of misunderstandings, while a short standup meeting or video call would have solved it in less time. And simple factual information belongs in good documentation, not being asked in Slack as a crutch and then claim "but it's searchable"
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    I’m not sure I’d call Slack async, it’s somewhere between async and slow synchronous. There’s a cultural expectation in many places that you respond to Slack messages ASAP that I’ve never experienced using email.
- noahdesu 6y ago
  I can sympathize with this take. Although I'm generally fine with either async or sync--whichever is most efficient--it seems that individuals don't usually know which is right for them.
- kbutler 6y ago
  That's only for single message info-dumps or single query-response. If I need to tell you something, it will save your time if I distill it. But note that it may be more efficient overall to do it by voice, or maybe my time actually is more valuable than your time. (or vice versa). If we're doing it interactively, I can verify your comprehension and limit my need to elaborate, saving us both time. And if we need back-and-forth collaboration, interactive is likely to be much better than multiple interruptions and context switches. My general rule is, if it's going to be more than 2 back-and-forth exchanges, do a voice call. And waiting while someone types a response is pure waste.
- togume 6y ago
  One important factor that this statement doesn't take into account is that you can only approximate understanding what the other person is going to understand when they read what you expressed. This becomes harder when it's more than one person receiving the message.
atoav 6y ago
I work as IT-Support for a university and during the last months I mainly had to do with video conferencing both on and off work (a person living in my household still studies and they have been in conferences as well). My feeling is: video conferencing took hold for two main reasons (in the university context): 1. It is the most straightforward continuation of whatever existed before (those who talk, talk and those who listen, listen) 2. People have desire for beeing close with others However in terms of efficiency, I noticed that the raw educational value of some (often 4h+ long) meetings could have been summarized by watching a well produced 15min video and reading a 10 page PDF, if one were to skip all the chitchat and pointless hollow remarks. In terms of information density the seemingly unlimited nature of video conferencing doesn't work out well in practise (especially if paired with people who like to hear themselves speak). Most of our educators are certainly not happy with what it does to the way they have to teach (less interactivity — anything other than a 3-way conversation is nearly impossible, the rest has to be passive). They say it leads to more frontal and less communicative education. As musician, artist and programmer i know async collaborations and projects — the best stuff was always a combination of sync and async. This is why I tend to recommend to our educators to view video conferences not as the replacement for their usual seminars, but as part of a strategic mix with synchronous (video conferences) and asynchronous components (email, collaborative text editing, etc).
- Larrikin 6y ago
  In my experience with the many educational services and communities that do summarize the important content, if you do simply read/listen to the hyper condensed version of 4+ hours a week of lecture you will most likely need to spend that same amount of time saved reviewing to absorb the material if it is anything past the most basics. What the most basics are will vary between people but at a certain point in your learning the time spent thinking about what you're learning simply becomes an important part of the learning process. Personally I find the "chit chat and hollow conversation" far more pleasurable than spending those hours alone reviewing notes, obviously with the caveat that most of the discussion is related to the material at hand in some way
- draugadrotten 6y ago
  > well produced 15min video and reading a 10 page PDF, It is surprisingly difficult to create a useful 15 minute video. Go ahead and be rich if you find it easy. It takes me about 8 hours to produce 15 minutes of truly information-packed video content. And it is not as re-usable as you think. > if one were to skip all the chitchat Many people need the social chitchat to feel OK. It is not a negative side of video conferencing, it is added value.
rwmj 6y ago
> The reason synchronous video communication continues to dominate is because it's more information dense than text in many situations, and more interactive than asynchronous alternatives. You really don't join the kind of video conferences I'm called into, where an hour long meeting might easily have been done in a few minutes by email.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  In my opinion if you have a meeting where a few people talk to thousands in a company you're better served by sending everybody a static video and allowing for Q/A via email. Every time I hear about meetings that could of been emails I can't help but think somebody's trying to justify their jobs. Edit: Typo, and on a sidenote, I'm glad I hear about these sorta meetings from others, my boss does his best to keep us out of useless cruft.
ptato 6y ago
> video communication [...] is more information dense than text this has never been my experience. group meetings devolve into explaining the same thing in many different ways, for every item that is discussed.
monkeydust 6y ago
Agree on information density - I am finding also that conference calls (internally) are getting shorted. 1hr was norm, then 30mins now 15min catchups are in place. I actually like this - can work if both parties are like minded - a lot of information can be exchanged this way in 15min. Obviously does not leave much time for 'small talk' though, which for me is good.

n3storm 6y ago

I disagree. The reason is that some people is not educated in async or just lazy. It takes just one person that refuses to go async to make everybody use video. I heard it thousand of times: "let me call you cause I explain better by phone" No, you don't. You just use many resources to keep conversation going until you find terms and produce proper phrases. You could perfectly have elaborated this by your own and wrote it down in an email or chat group. Sorry this was deep inside me and had to come out :D

t0mas88 6y ago
I have the exact opposite observation: In my company developers/engineers over use chat (in this case Slack) and email compared to other groups which causes unnecessarily long discussions. It's great that it's async, it works very well for simple factual information, but it doesn't work for topics where not everyone agrees. Those drag out over time, and cause a lot of misunderstandings, while a short standup meeting or video call would have solved it in less time. And simple factual information belongs in good documentation, not being asked in Slack as a crutch and then claim "but it's searchable"
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  I’m not sure I’d call Slack async, it’s somewhere between async and slow synchronous. There’s a cultural expectation in many places that you respond to Slack messages ASAP that I’ve never experienced using email.
noahdesu 6y ago
I can sympathize with this take. Although I'm generally fine with either async or sync--whichever is most efficient--it seems that individuals don't usually know which is right for them.
kbutler 6y ago
That's only for single message info-dumps or single query-response. If I need to tell you something, it will save your time if I distill it. But note that it may be more efficient overall to do it by voice, or maybe my time actually is more valuable than your time. (or vice versa). If we're doing it interactively, I can verify your comprehension and limit my need to elaborate, saving us both time. And if we need back-and-forth collaboration, interactive is likely to be much better than multiple interruptions and context switches. My general rule is, if it's going to be more than 2 back-and-forth exchanges, do a voice call. And waiting while someone types a response is pure waste.
togume 6y ago
One important factor that this statement doesn't take into account is that you can only approximate understanding what the other person is going to understand when they read what you expressed. This becomes harder when it's more than one person receiving the message.

atoav 6y ago

I work as IT-Support for a university and during the last months I mainly had to do with video conferencing both on and off work (a person living in my household still studies and they have been in conferences as well). My feeling is: video conferencing took hold for two main reasons (in the university context): 1. It is the most straightforward continuation of whatever existed before (those who talk, talk and those who listen, listen) 2. People have desire for beeing close with others However in terms of efficiency, I noticed that the raw educational value of some (often 4h+ long) meetings could have been summarized by watching a well produced 15min video and reading a 10 page PDF, if one were to skip all the chitchat and pointless hollow remarks. In terms of information density the seemingly unlimited nature of video conferencing doesn't work out well in practise (especially if paired with people who like to hear themselves speak). Most of our educators are certainly not happy with what it does to the way they have to teach (less interactivity — anything other than a 3-way conversation is nearly impossible, the rest has to be passive). They say it leads to more frontal and less communicative education. As musician, artist and programmer i know async collaborations and projects — the best stuff was always a combination of sync and async. This is why I tend to recommend to our educators to view video conferences not as the replacement for their usual seminars, but as part of a strategic mix with synchronous (video conferences) and asynchronous components (email, collaborative text editing, etc).

Larrikin 6y ago
In my experience with the many educational services and communities that do summarize the important content, if you do simply read/listen to the hyper condensed version of 4+ hours a week of lecture you will most likely need to spend that same amount of time saved reviewing to absorb the material if it is anything past the most basics. What the most basics are will vary between people but at a certain point in your learning the time spent thinking about what you're learning simply becomes an important part of the learning process. Personally I find the "chit chat and hollow conversation" far more pleasurable than spending those hours alone reviewing notes, obviously with the caveat that most of the discussion is related to the material at hand in some way
draugadrotten 6y ago
> well produced 15min video and reading a 10 page PDF, It is surprisingly difficult to create a useful 15 minute video. Go ahead and be rich if you find it easy. It takes me about 8 hours to produce 15 minutes of truly information-packed video content. And it is not as re-usable as you think. > if one were to skip all the chitchat Many people need the social chitchat to feel OK. It is not a negative side of video conferencing, it is added value.

rwmj 6y ago

> The reason synchronous video communication continues to dominate is because it's more information dense than text in many situations, and more interactive than asynchronous alternatives. You really don't join the kind of video conferences I'm called into, where an hour long meeting might easily have been done in a few minutes by email.

giancarlostoro 6y ago
In my opinion if you have a meeting where a few people talk to thousands in a company you're better served by sending everybody a static video and allowing for Q/A via email. Every time I hear about meetings that could of been emails I can't help but think somebody's trying to justify their jobs. Edit: Typo, and on a sidenote, I'm glad I hear about these sorta meetings from others, my boss does his best to keep us out of useless cruft.

ptato 6y ago

> video communication [...] is more information dense than text this has never been my experience. group meetings devolve into explaining the same thing in many different ways, for every item that is discussed.

monkeydust 6y ago

Agree on information density - I am finding also that conference calls (internally) are getting shorted. 1hr was norm, then 30mins now 15min catchups are in place. I actually like this - can work if both parties are like minded - a lot of information can be exchanged this way in 15min. Obviously does not leave much time for 'small talk' though, which for me is good.