
A Distributed Meeting Primer - mooreds
https://randsinrepose.com/archives/a-distributed-meeting-primer/
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chasedehan
One screen, One face

That’s really the only way to do it. Any other situation where there are
people looking face to face and someone else on a screen makes it not fully
collaborative. People are naturally more inclined when there is someone they
can look eye to eye.

My company is ~50% remote (or distributed) and our all hands are with every
person on their own laptop. Some people in the office pushed back, but we went
this direction with zoom where you can have up to 100 people on the screen at
1 time and it has been incredible. Plus, you don’t have to set up any a/v
equipment because the meeting link is in the calendar invite.

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foxbarrington
How do you avoid feedback and other audio issues for people in the same room?

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joeblubaugh
We use headphones for everybody. Laptops do a good job avoiding feedback

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aantix
I have a neighbor that owns a consultancy. They've started shipping the
Meeting Owl videoconference camera to all of their high profile clients.

I personally haven't used it, but he spoke highly of it. I think the
intelligent focusing of whomever is talking looks interesting. Certainly looks
better than those "cameras in the sky looking down" views that are typical to
most office setups.

[https://www.owllabs.com/](https://www.owllabs.com/)

P.S. No I'm not an investor, owner, or anything. Just a product that seems to
take a different approach to remote meeting presentations.

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kryptn
We have a couple owls in our office for the remote and wfh folks, I think they
work really well!

They sound good, both in the room and on a call. The video quality is good and
the whole focusing on the active speakers is pretty nifty.

It doesn't really help with whiteboard discussions, it can be hard to keep it
focused on the whiteboard. We've ended up just tapping the whiteboard to get
it to focus.

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aantix
Apparently they just released a pro version with a better 360 camera and mics.
In q2 there suppose to have better tech for focusing on the whiteboard.
[https://www.owllabs.com/meeting-owl#smart-meeting-
rooms](https://www.owllabs.com/meeting-owl#smart-meeting-rooms)

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throwaway77330
Remote (or distributed) worker at a company mostly in a single building. I
wish I was worried about the stuff in this article. I’m just lucky when I
don’t have to beg for a call in number.

After a bunch of terrible calls with antiquated desk phones on speaker, I
asked to have some of the conference phones in the main building upgraded just
to the poly on conference phones (couple hundred dollars each). Was told no.
So instead we waste way more money with expensive engineers trying to make out
what is being said.

All video cameras on company equipment are disabled. By corporate policy, they
previously only worked on skype, which is only internal to the company. When I
asked why they were disabled, I was told that it was to protect proprietary
information. Everyone carries around a personal cell phone capable of
transmitting video to anywhere in the world and that is okay, but locked down
company hardware that can only transmit in company is too much of a risk.

I asked for a few small surface hubs to do video conferencing on, and was told
no. Then they spent more money to buy one big one and put it by the
executives, with restrictions on who can use it, so it is never used.

I could keep going.

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AceJohnny2
This is very nice, and I've shared it with some colleagues.

I've dealt with distributed meetings my whole career, and it's ranged from
"wall-pounding waste of time" to just "meh". My current job has a pretty great
system, but the weak spot remains WebEx, with people not muting by default or
forgetting that they're on mute.

This article is a good list for any host/moderator to enforce.

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acheron9383
Lol WebEx is always the weakspot. Push to talk by default would be a nice add.

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AceJohnny2
From what I've observed, a large proportion of my colleagues would fail even
harder -_-

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perlpimp
Team can be distributed or not, every time someone is on outside they are
missing non-verbal communications. What I read in the article are a bunch of
crutches and to seriously fix this make everyone remote, even if in the same
office. Or make meetings onsite. Everything else will seriously undermine good
fabric of the meeting, so sit back at your machines and be remote. Granted,
sometimes people are sick and can't attend of whatever reason meatspace meets
- same holds, they will be excluded from some communication. my 2c.

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latchkey
I work with a small team of 5 that is distributed all over the world (Vietnam,
NYC, Abu Dhabi, Hungry). Every weekday, for the past year, we have a meeting
using Zoom. This is by far the best software and we've standardized on it for
all of our meetings, even with outside contacts.

One interesting thing we've taken to is not using video. I don't know why, but
it works better to just hear voices. We are cautious to not talk over each
other, even if it gets passionate.

We are very careful to mute ourselves after talking to prevent any sort of
feedback as well as keep outside noise down. I've found that wearing
headphones with my laptop mic works best.

We also have a policy of being on time. It is very rare for us to show up even
one minute late. In fact, I just show up early and wait a few minutes on hold.

Out of band started with Slack and for some reason has moved to a whatsapp
group... I don't really know why and haven't really bothered to figure it out.

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macrael
here's my suggestion: If anyone in a meeting is calling in, kill the
conference room and everyone get on zoom. We are a mostly distributed company,
so it makes obvious sense for us, but even early one when only some folks were
not present, we switched to everyone being on zoom or no one being on zoom and
it make everything better.

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fyfy18
I'll also add that Zoom (even for just audio) is lot more reliable than Slack
in my experience.

