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

chelseatroy.com

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

#91
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, this may sound nuts but I think the only issue with your proposal is that it doesn’t address the reason that this doesn’t happen. Our colleagues do not or do not want to read business communications for the purpose of comprehension for the content of their own work or communication with their colleagues. I genuinely propose a three strike policy where professional employees are to be fired after three occasions…

People not reading emails hasn't really been a problem pretty much anywhere I worked for the last 10 years or more. People not writing them has been a problem though. Maybe this was caused by people not reading them, but I've always suspected that a lot of people just don't like writing, and/or aren't very good at it. So it's easier for them to do an in-person meeting. And when no or very few emails get sent, no on r…

I think it depends on corporate culture. I have >8,000 unread emails in my corporate gmail, and it only has a 2 year retention policy.

Some companies overcommunicate, and email can essentially be unusable due to noise. it can be a huge issue if there are multiple modes of communication.

I get communication through email, chats, groups, google doc comments, smart sheets, 3 quality systems, and workday.

As a result, it can take a while for me to circle back to my email inbox and give the messages thoughtful consideration.

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

#93

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…

I think one of the things COVID and the subsequent WFH discussion highlighted for me is how much there's a certain kind of person, often managers, who have a lot of meetings and use them for socialization. The irrelevant minutes of chatting about last night's football or whatever is an important thing for them.

And some of that is important! I'm not going to go full robot and say that all comms must be professional-only. But there's a tension between people who like that and people who don't, and cameras make it worse because you're under surveillance for whether or not you're doing something else instead of not participating in a chat you can't be bothered with.

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely find camera-on meetings have people pay more attention. Whether that is more productive or not depends on your definition of productive. The the “camera off lets me do other work”-theory that people in this thread adhere to says the meeting itself is unproductive and the less involved participants are the more chance they have of being productive.

Amazon is very much a camera-on kind of company. What I noticed is that everyone turns on their camera, then most people stare dead-eyed at the camera, not doing anything useful, but also making sure they don’t move or let their eyes drift from looking at the camera. And as soon as they join, they mute themselves or are automatically muted. Only when they are called on do they then respond, and it’s usually a pretty…

> they’ve been so focused on the fact that they are on-camera 100% of the time and they don’t ever want to be seen to be doing anything “wrong” during that time.

> For no-camera companies, it seems to me that those people are usually more engaged with actually listening to the conversation and responding in real time during the meeting

This seems to be a dichotomy between "producing Being Present In A Meeting" (a short documentary film of a person staring directly at the camera, knowing that looking away will be interpreted negatively; a species of hostage video), and participating in a conversation.

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

#95
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Technically yes, but a laptop as a desktop replacer is sound only if you need to use it also on the go and most of the time you are on the go. Otherwise a desktop is much more sound: while some laptop can be docked (any most can be used as docked even without a proper station) it's a nonsense setup if you aren't really "on the go". A desktop is cheaper, easier to maintain.

My main point is simple: hybrid work is dumb: you still need to be near the office, witch typically is in a dense city, where accommodations tend to be tight, so WFH there is not cheaper than the office nor much comfy, you reduce commuting but still need to commute in a dense so unpleasant environment, and you do not have the advantage of single family homes in most cases where you have room for many things at home, from freezers to p.v. and so on. Also offices are even LESS utilized, we already have in cities big buildings used for less than 12h/day with hybrid "home" usage climb but still less than full remote and office usage plunge even more. You need laptops or double desk setup, again wasted resources and/or reduced comfort for what? Just to get physical ads (shops windows) while commuting, the need to commute more simply because being in tighter places you can't stock much at home, all just to make the finance capitalism, the surveillance capitalism to survive a bit more? NO THANKS.

There are some jobs who need desktops and can't be from home, so laptops do have a reason to exists, but they should be niche products not mainstream desktop. So far the idea "a real desktop for anyone is too much resources, while mobile devices, subnotebooks can be given to anyone" prove to be PR bullshit because it sound logic, but given the little useful life of such devices compared to desktop (few years against 8-10-12 years for a personal generic desktop that can still be upgraded partially) and the nearly no recycling prove we waste MUCH MORE resources in building crap: smartphones, tablet, smart watches, TV, ... instead of a single desktop per human. So if we can give a mobile device to any humans we can give a desktop to anyone, if we can't we MIGHT still be able to gives desktop.

Mobile is needed in most cases for slavery, the rest is just a niche. It's about time to understand that, stop the utter style of a desk with a small laptop and a smartphone and a smartwatch and some all-in-ears battery powered crap to have a simple desktop, with a good monitor, a good "conference style" combined device (mic+speaker+cam), a damn trackball and mechanical keyboard. Things built to last at least 8 years for 99% of the people. Less integrated as possible to be less hard to recycle and easier to partially upgrade.

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

#96

> 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.

For the meeting class of employees it would take them longer to write the half page memo than to have the hour long meeting.

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

#98
post #63

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).

Can't wait until you bring in the anatomical parts of Egyptian script. ;)

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

#99

Fully agree with the article's focus on proper meeting discipline. This can be coupled with Edward Tufte's suggestions on how to present at a meeting. To summarize, he says that there is no point sending a presentation in advance .. most will not read it anyway. Instead of a presentation, write about 5-6 six pages of prose and hand them out at the beginning of the meeting. Every one will scan the document in their ow…

This is really just wasting 20 minutes, it's much better to have a clear agenda which is basically in the form of bullet point notes that most people would make outlining the important topics and questions. Then just go through the agenda providing a brief elaboration on each topic and take questions, get agreement, write down the conclusion and move on. If the meeting is purely informational then in most cases you s…

[deleted]

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

#100
post #93

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…

I think one of the things COVID and the subsequent WFH discussion highlighted for me is how much there's a certain kind of person, often managers, who have a lot of meetings and use them for socialization. The irrelevant minutes of chatting about last night's football or whatever is an important thing for them. And some of that is important! I'm not going to go full robot and say that all comms must be professional-o…

>I think one of the things COVID and the subsequent WFH discussion highlighted for me is how much there's a certain kind of person, often managers, who have a lot of meetings and use them for socialization.

I constantly say that the push against WFH is all coming from extroverts that are mad that they can't steal energy from the rest of us.

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