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With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

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Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#51

Post by arrosenberg »

baby wrote: post #39

I am sooo interested in this because I think loom is one of the best and most useful products for communicating knowledge. Especially in remote companies. But it’s not interactive! I want to be able for people to add and insert videos, and for me to insert responses or keep building a video based on what people asked. I’m surprised by the skepticism here. Slides suck ass to communicate ideas, and text is just not eno…

I'm personally skeptical because the only thing I want to do less than watch a presentation is be forced to watch a video.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#52

Post by constantcrying »

Horrifying. If you want to transfer information, then text + illustration is the best way to accomplish that.

Now we get a 10 Minute Video of an AI narrating a 5 Bullet point list the user gave it with AI generated visuals. Productivity just has to go through the roof.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#53

Post by peeters »

As an alternative to slides it might work well, but both are terrible formats for reference material (anything where you need to extract a quick piece of information). The shift to having to mine YouTube videos for much of the world's specialized knowledge is a shame, and Google makes it worse every day with how they prioritize search results.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#54

Post by Swizec »

nlawalker wrote: post #49
Swizec wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to treat it like a small club standup session. These meetings are how you figure out what to put in the youtube video or other documentation. Audience questions are vital.

Do you call them “brown bags” and “tech talks”? For a lot of people those terms imply a one-way presentation.

Not all feedback is explicit. Being able to see when you're confusing the audience helps a lot.

Beyond that it depends on situation. Talk at a large conference is obviously one-way. Private talk to a "room" of 10 people who work with you on similar problems can be very interactive. The best ones are a low-fi 15min talk followed by a 45min discussion.

Those 45min discussions are pure gold for a future large conference talk.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#55

Post by tqi »

I absolutely LOATH it when people post a video instead of a document or deck (except in cases when they need to demo something) because they essentially offload the work onto the audience. Obviously there are exceptions, but in general writing an update requires the author plan what they want to communicate. In my experience, off-the-cuff Loom videos are often rambling and verbose, and leave it to the viewer to synthesize. On top of that, videos are harder to scan, harder to search, and require headphones or a quiet space to be consumed.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#56

Post by cjk2 »

Seb-C wrote: post #25

Not bad, so instead of having people spend time making powerpoints and then give presentations while everyone else pretends to listen, now the presenter can auto generate it while everyone else pretends to have clicked the link. This is a more efficient way to waste time, it might actually succeed in many companies (until Google kills it anyway).

I'm wondering if this Dilbert was prophetic https://imgur.com/a/JB5g9Fx

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#58

Post by badwolf »

hidelooktropic wrote: post #38

I've always been skeptical of generative AI being used to make slides. I like the idea of it, and maybe someday we will get there. But right now, they all feel like they are trying to fully automate the process where what I really want them to do is automate the tedious parts, co-piloting with me. Because what ends up happening is I need a high degree of precision and I have a very concrete idea of what I need to pre…

I feel you. I wish PowerPoint's "Design suggestions" could at least be editable. It will often suggest a similar layout that looks nicer, but with some dumb crayon looking lines. Just let me (re)move that stupid line at the very least.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#59

Post by esafak »

belval wrote: post #23
hightrix wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds awful. Video is the worst way to consume anything technical, for me. Video tutorials and video code walk throughs are completely worthless for most things. I hope this is just another Google product that they shut down in a year and that it doesn't catch on.

There will be a fast follow for video transcription and search in videos so that people end up creating videos that nobody watch but get indexed by some internal system and provide a concise 1-pager for human consumption that should have been the original work output anyway. /s

You're saying they're more promotions to be had??

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#60

Post by MaximumMadness »

baby wrote: post #43
echelon wrote: post #5

Loom is one of the best tools for remote work. If this is free and in Google Docs, I won't need Loom anymore. Loom should be terrified. This will probably also be added to YouTube, so CapCut and the like are about to be checkmated too. The biggest worry for this product is that it's from Google and we know how they are about products.

I thought the same thing. If I were loom this is a very scary news. Expect loom response to look like “we are not competing on the same product” and then loom to be acquired by salesforce

FWIW - Loom was acquired by Atlassian earlier this year
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