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How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

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Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#61

Post by cpeterso »

agentultra wrote: post #22

> if the goal is instead to deliver info to the attendees, your meeting should be an email If we just stuck to this rule I would have hours of more time to do actual work. So many “meetings,” are listening to folks um-and-ah their way through their slides. They read the exact text they wrote. Slowly. It’s painful. Just send an email. If this happens in recurring meetings, make an email digest.

The flip side of “this meeting should have been an email” is that people need to read their email. I think Slack, always on and always interrupting, has eroded thoughtful email habits.

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#62

Post by lordnacho »

bruce511 wrote: post #36
wvenable wrote: post #11

In our organization, remote meetings don't suck. It more or less just happened organically because we are a fairly flat organization but in a traditional industry. Mostly no cameras. I don't even own a webcam. A meeting is called for a reason (even if it's recurring). We have no "this is the morning meeting" kind of meetings. There a single person in charge of the meeting. This is most often the person who wants to g…

Typically I leave my camera off during meetings. (Well, the boring ones anyway.) Which means I just keep on working during the meeting listening with half an ear. This is especially applicable to reoccurring meetings where the manager is talking to the team, getting progress reports, working through the jira list and so on. This actually makes for a really productive meeting. I can fill the dead time with admin tasks…

> Which means I just keep on working during the meeting listening with half an ear.

I think this might be WHY remote meetings work so well when they work.

They aren't meetings like a board room meeting. They are like sitting in a room with colleagues and occasionally communicating.

If everyone has to pay attention, the meeting had better be worth n x salary x hours.

If you can sort of be there and sort of not, it costs very little.

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#63

Post by dhosek »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #56
tired-turtle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect to emphasize enumeration so readers don’t incorrectly parse the sentence. But the text would be even clearer had these speech patterns been omitted altogether.

I'm way more irked by (2) following (a). It's (a), (b), (c), or (1), (2), (3), or (а), (б), (в), but for chrissake, don't mix the styles.

Hey, keep complaining and I’ll give you (ⅲ), (四), (〥), (༦), (٧), (๘) and (᥏).

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#64

Post by dbalatero »

kkfx wrote: post #48
stavros wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VoIP phones have excellent latency nowadays, much better than a call. It's possible to have a normal conversation on them.

It's not much the phone but the network. How many insist using craptops with crappy softphone webapps connected via crappy wifi because they think a damn desktop with a normal cat6 to the router is "an old thing"? How many even try to attend certain meetings on the go on crappy mobile macrobugs AKA smartphones on mobile networks?

I think a laptop with cat6 would be sufficient.

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#65

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I just have a policy of as few meetings (remote or FTF), as possible. No repeating, scheduled ones. All meetings should be ad hoc (so no daily standups or weekly roundups).

As I worked for a Japanese company, these ideas found stony soil, but now that I'm on my own, I try to keep this policy.

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#66

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #65

I just have a policy of as few meetings (remote or FTF), as possible. No repeating, scheduled ones. All meetings should be ad hoc (so no daily standups or weekly roundups). As I worked for a Japanese company, these ideas found stony soil, but now that I'm on my own, I try to keep this policy.

[deleted]

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#67

Post by SoftTalker »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #65

I just have a policy of as few meetings (remote or FTF), as possible. No repeating, scheduled ones. All meetings should be ad hoc (so no daily standups or weekly roundups). As I worked for a Japanese company, these ideas found stony soil, but now that I'm on my own, I try to keep this policy.

I agree completely. If a meeting is being held so that one person can present information to the group, that can be an email.

If a meeting is held so each person can update a leader with his/her status, those updates can also be emails. If the whole group needs to see those updates, it can be a wiki or a shared document.

A meeting should only be called when that group of people needs to discuss a topic together and reach a consensus or make a decision. If it's just for communicating information, there are better, asynchronous alternatives.

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#68

Post by nlawalker »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #2

stop having them and rely largely on email for communications that should in fact be email.

For people who are good readers and writers of email, there's a winning strategy that gives everyone what they want.

On the receiving side: information-delivery presentations are async communications, it's just that historical precedent demands that everyone get a calendar invite to the live taping. Not everyone wants to write and send email, and with the options for consuming recorded content now, that's fine. You can read their slides, watch their presentation at 2x, fly through the transcript, read the AI summary, etc. on your own time.

On the sending side: next time you write a really great email, don't send it. Send a meeting invite so people can watch live while you record yourself reading it to the camera while displaying slides with a bullet-point summary you can have ChatGPT generate for you. Get good at it and you'll quickly get a reputation for being a great communicator - people will genuinely be impressed at how prepared you are and how clear your thinking is.

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#69

Post by [deleted] »

SoftTalker wrote: post #67
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #65

I just have a policy of as few meetings (remote or FTF), as possible. No repeating, scheduled ones. All meetings should be ad hoc (so no daily standups or weekly roundups). As I worked for a Japanese company, these ideas found stony soil, but now that I'm on my own, I try to keep this policy.

I agree completely. If a meeting is being held so that one person can present information to the group, that can be an email. If a meeting is held so each person can update a leader with his/her status, those updates can also be emails. If the whole group needs to see those updates, it can be a wiki or a shared document. A meeting should only be called when that group of people needs to discuss a topic together and r…

[deleted]

Re: How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

#70

Post by refulgentis »

dhosek wrote: post #63
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm way more irked by (2) following (a). It's (a), (b), (c), or (1), (2), (3), or (а), (б), (в), but for chrissake, don't mix the styles.

Hey, keep complaining and I’ll give you (ⅲ), (四), (〥), (༦), (٧), (๘) and (᥏).

Not in this thread yet, not talking down to you, apologies if tone comes across that way: jokes aside, noticed you're OP, and I'm very curious what the intent was here.
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