Meeting lengths are changing during coronavirus remote work

Zoom is a little clunky for that - if you have something like whereby.com you can have a named room for yourself so you don't even have any friction to find a virtual place to talk because it is preestablished which really makes the talk feel serendipidous.

With push notifications on rooms, team members can pile on a team room if they are free and watch to listen in in case it's interesting to them. Equally with push notifications people can come to your room if they're looking for you.

But it's also a lot less intrusive than a phone ringing. If you know the room people are in a call in, you can interrupt them (because sometimes you do need to get hold of people right this second).

It can really feel like the low friction parts of an office with the right mindset and buy in. Obviously there are pros and cons to having that low activation barrier but I find them a net positive overall.

It really can be as simple as "hey can we chat" or "@team - quick call?" and then drop all the formality of a meeting and approach the call like as if you walked up to their desk to say hi.

The advantage there is I can choose when to respond which is never the case in shoulder tapping office environments and meeting schedule negotiations both of which are disruptive.

Email is even better than meetings and disruptions!

I think Remotion works best for small teams that have a certain operating rhythm and informality to them. The clunkiness of Zoom et al reflects the formality required of cross-organization collaboration, where things must be scheduled, everyone's expected to give their undivided fullscreen attention, politics dictates relevant parties all have a chance to speak, etc.

[1] https://www.remotion.com

I've had friends who feign unstable electrical grids altogether!

Easiest way to get out of things you don't want to attend