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One difference between in person and video calls interaction is, a video call is a performance. This is better explained in Amusing ourselves to death by Neil P

One difference between in person and video calls interaction is, a video call is a performance. This is better explained in Amusing ourselves to death by Neil Postman, but let me attempt. Imagine a TV show where a political candidate is asked a question, and instead of answering, he remains silent. The camera pans on him and zooms in. 3.5 seconds later, we switch to a close up from the camera on the left. The guest is still silent. 3.5 seconds later, the camera switches to the host who is also starting to look confused. A whole 11 seconds has gone by and the guest is still silent, his eyes looking up. Right before the host is about to halt things and go on a commercial break, the guest breaks his silence with a single word. "No". Even without knowing what the actual question was, you know this candidate is not going to win the race. It was a bad performance. But what if I tell you, he was asked a difficult question that he hadn't thought of before, and he took all of 15 seconds to consider it before giving a sound answer? That's the problem with video, any time spent thinking on screen can be perceived as incompetence. 3.5 seconds is the average length of a shot on TV. And it makes silence look awfully long. Brainstorming requires doing some silent thinking. In my previous job, I used to spend hours in a conference room with my colleague after we had plotted our plan on the whiteboard. Then, we would just sit down and look at the board in silence for long period of times. With the occasional "what if... no never mind." When covid hit, we tried to do that via zoom. Didn't work. Silence does not work well on camera.

Jedd 4y ago
I concur - dead air in person is much more palatable, especially if multiple people are engaged on the same (mental) task at the same time. The description you're giving there, of the performance, is one where only one person is doing that, so it's not 100% analogous - though in the context of TFA it certainly is (ie. 'group brainstorming'). Tangentially but related, John Ralston Saul had this to say (complain about?) on the subject of immediacy in the face of questions: "ANSWERS [are] A mechanism for avoiding questions. "This might be called obsessional avoidance or a manic syndrome. It is based on the belief that the possession of an education — particularly if it leads to professional or expert status and, above all, if it involves some responsibility or power carries with it an obligation to provide the answer to every question posed in your area of knowledge. This has become much more than the opiate of the rational élites. It may be the West’s most serious addiction. "Time is of the essence in this process. An inability to provide the answer immediately is a professional fault. The availability of unlimited facts can produce an equally unlimited number of absolute answers in most areas. Memory is not highly regarded. Right answers which turn out to be wrong are simply replaced by a new formula. The result of these sequential truths is an assertive or declarative society which admires neither reflection nor doubt and has difficulty with the idea that to most questions there are many answers, none of them absolute and few of them satisfactory except in a limited way."
chrisco255 4y ago
Does it work better with just an audio-only group call? I've sat on 2-3 hour long group audio chats with teammates and that seems to work better, just having enough time for dead-air, like you're saying. I know it's not as good as in-person, but it may be an improvement over awkwardly sitting in front of the camera.
- em-bee 4y ago
  i was going to say, audio knly doesn't work better. one reason i dislike phone calls. don't get time to think. it's different when pairing or being continuously online with your team while working, because then you don't have the feeling of waiting for someone to talk all the time.
  - s0rce 4y ago
    I've only found a couple people where I can stay on long phone calls and really hash out complex problems or brainstorm.
- roeles 4y ago
  I've found this to work very well, given a wireless headphone. I can pace around, make notes, stare out the window. If the call has comfort noise enabled and I am having a one-on-one with a colleague, the silences are very bearable.
galaxyLogic 4y ago
That gives me an idea. We should have an audio-conference instead and everybody could just lay on their bean-bags at home. Every now and then somebody says something. Somebody else replies at some point. Or perhaps poses a new question to think about. Encourage people to "think deep" and enjoy the experience.
- toastal 4y ago
  Back to Mumble we go!
JadeNB 4y ago
> In my previous job, I used to spend hours in a conference room with my colleague after we had plotted our plan on the whiteboard. Then, we would just sit down and look at the board in silence for long period of times. With the occasional "what if... no never mind." When covid hit, we tried to do that via zoom. Didn't work. > Silence does not work well on camera. I think that this is not a universal law. My current collaborator and I, who wouldn’t be able to work together in person most of the time under any circumstances, have weekly Zoom calls which are of exactly the mostly-silent type you describe. (He calls them “grunting occasionally at each other.”) Everyone does have to be on board, though. We tried the calls with a third collaborator last year who was less on board with the methodology, and it did not work at all, with a pressure to say _something_ all the time leading to much more talk but much less done.
watwut 4y ago
I don't think meeting is equivalent of online TV show prior elections. The format is different, the stakes are different, the expected level of preparation is different.
johnnyanmac 4y ago
I don't think (vocal) silence is the problem per se. It's more a factor of 1. lack of body language, which people highly overlook. To go back to your political candidate question, if those 11 seconds were spent with him jostling through some notes, scribbling some ideas down, and then saying "no"... it may not still be the kind of candidate the people want. But it would be a much better performance than dead silence. Now in a video call setting, the people won't see that. they at best see you looking down at your feet and maybe hear a bit of paper. 2. partially due to #1, a change in dynamics of focus. You don't have to maintain eye contact in a limited space in an office nor small conference room. There's a pressure to do so in a video call because all that's usually shown are a face and maybe a tiny bit of background. You may as well be in a straight jacket and try to claim that you can brainstorm just as well as normal. You have less means to communicate, so closing those avenues make it harder to collaborate.
giancarlostoro 4y ago
Maybe I'm an odd one out, but my team never goes on camera unless we notice others doing so. What we instead do is either talk it out, or someone shares a screen and types into OneNote or any other software and we all just talk things out. I could see how cameras would make things awkward though. My suggestion is unless you're introducing yourselves for the first time ever, I don't see the point of a camera being on for every single meeting.

Jedd 4y ago

I concur - dead air in person is much more palatable, especially if multiple people are engaged on the same (mental) task at the same time. The description you're giving there, of the performance, is one where only one person is doing that, so it's not 100% analogous - though in the context of TFA it certainly is (ie. 'group brainstorming'). Tangentially but related, John Ralston Saul had this to say (complain about?) on the subject of immediacy in the face of questions: "ANSWERS [are] A mechanism for avoiding questions. "This might be called obsessional avoidance or a manic syndrome. It is based on the belief that the possession of an education — particularly if it leads to professional or expert status and, above all, if it involves some responsibility or power carries with it an obligation to provide the answer to every question posed in your area of knowledge. This has become much more than the opiate of the rational élites. It may be the West’s most serious addiction. "Time is of the essence in this process. An inability to provide the answer immediately is a professional fault. The availability of unlimited facts can produce an equally unlimited number of absolute answers in most areas. Memory is not highly regarded. Right answers which turn out to be wrong are simply replaced by a new formula. The result of these sequential truths is an assertive or declarative society which admires neither reflection nor doubt and has difficulty with the idea that to most questions there are many answers, none of them absolute and few of them satisfactory except in a limited way."

chrisco255 4y ago

Does it work better with just an audio-only group call? I've sat on 2-3 hour long group audio chats with teammates and that seems to work better, just having enough time for dead-air, like you're saying. I know it's not as good as in-person, but it may be an improvement over awkwardly sitting in front of the camera.

em-bee 4y ago
i was going to say, audio knly doesn't work better. one reason i dislike phone calls. don't get time to think. it's different when pairing or being continuously online with your team while working, because then you don't have the feeling of waiting for someone to talk all the time.
- s0rce 4y ago
  I've only found a couple people where I can stay on long phone calls and really hash out complex problems or brainstorm.
roeles 4y ago
I've found this to work very well, given a wireless headphone. I can pace around, make notes, stare out the window. If the call has comfort noise enabled and I am having a one-on-one with a colleague, the silences are very bearable.

galaxyLogic 4y ago

That gives me an idea. We should have an audio-conference instead and everybody could just lay on their bean-bags at home. Every now and then somebody says something. Somebody else replies at some point. Or perhaps poses a new question to think about. Encourage people to "think deep" and enjoy the experience.

toastal 4y ago
Back to Mumble we go!

JadeNB 4y ago

> In my previous job, I used to spend hours in a conference room with my colleague after we had plotted our plan on the whiteboard. Then, we would just sit down and look at the board in silence for long period of times. With the occasional "what if... no never mind." When covid hit, we tried to do that via zoom. Didn't work. > Silence does not work well on camera. I think that this is not a universal law. My current collaborator and I, who wouldn’t be able to work together in person most of the time under any circumstances, have weekly Zoom calls which are of exactly the mostly-silent type you describe. (He calls them “grunting occasionally at each other.”) Everyone does have to be on board, though. We tried the calls with a third collaborator last year who was less on board with the methodology, and it did not work at all, with a pressure to say _something_ all the time leading to much more talk but much less done.

watwut 4y ago

I don't think meeting is equivalent of online TV show prior elections. The format is different, the stakes are different, the expected level of preparation is different.

johnnyanmac 4y ago

I don't think (vocal) silence is the problem per se. It's more a factor of 1. lack of body language, which people highly overlook. To go back to your political candidate question, if those 11 seconds were spent with him jostling through some notes, scribbling some ideas down, and then saying "no"... it may not still be the kind of candidate the people want. But it would be a much better performance than dead silence. Now in a video call setting, the people won't see that. they at best see you looking down at your feet and maybe hear a bit of paper. 2. partially due to #1, a change in dynamics of focus. You don't have to maintain eye contact in a limited space in an office nor small conference room. There's a pressure to do so in a video call because all that's usually shown are a face and maybe a tiny bit of background. You may as well be in a straight jacket and try to claim that you can brainstorm just as well as normal. You have less means to communicate, so closing those avenues make it harder to collaborate.

giancarlostoro 4y ago

Maybe I'm an odd one out, but my team never goes on camera unless we notice others doing so. What we instead do is either talk it out, or someone shares a screen and types into OneNote or any other software and we all just talk things out. I could see how cameras would make things awkward though. My suggestion is unless you're introducing yourselves for the first time ever, I don't see the point of a camera being on for every single meeting.