Also, I don't know if this is in my head or just speaker or mic quality, or on phone/network noise cancellation, or what, but I've found landline calls to be much more clear and easy to converse than zoom or cell phone calls. I think that may be where some of the fatigue comes from.
Harder to do that over zoom because of an org policy that include the words “camera on”
With a wireless headset connected to my computer I have much more freedom, and at least I can continue some low-key work during meetings which aren't all that interesting or have a lull
> ... With a wireless headset connected to my computer
?
This is my (and my team's) main problem right now. We like working from home but it broke down any kind of interactive process/exercise, every meeting for a workshop becomes this choreography of: how to ask for a spot to speak, how to leave space for others to take that spot, who will facilitate that. It kills any spontaneous take or realisation that you could bring up in a meeting room. It feels like everyone has to stay in a queue to have time to speak. A lot of times it's happened that people forgot what they wanted to say or the conversation went way past that point and people don't feel like backtracking the discussion.
I can say that people feel like they should only speak up and state *really important things™" but often the small unsaid things are really valuable.
It really sucks, I thrive in environments where I can pick up bits and pieces of information and glue them together into something meaningful to my team, I can't really do that remotely (not without pestering people or trying to have scheduled coffee breaks to just chat).
Or maybe I'm just a luddite that likes landlines and IRC....
When I was using self-hosted Ventrilo playing with friends we didn't have this problem. It was like being in the same room. The ping was like 5ms and sound latency not noticeable.
One day in the far future, we'll have to learn to deal with the light lag. Why not start now?
Makes me wish I could have work meetings there, honestly.
An old POTS landline would be nice too, but my understanding is a lot of landlines now are basically VoIP anyway.
Yeah I think you're right. VOIP and landline and probably one and the same these days, and as long as whatever voice application you use doesn't use excessive compression or any added complexity, or route you halfway around the world, you've prob got landline quality.
Disclaimer: we dogfood our own product.
I care a lot about video when doing calls to keep in touch with family and friends, but I find it's really not pertinent or useful at work.
My favorite part is how low-effort the video calls themselves are. It makes me far more likely to end the conversation instead of waffling around looking for other things to shove into a meeting
* Not a customer, investor, or the janitor. Just looks like a good solution to a wall of meetings.
Too much overhead or something with asynchronous communications, or having to “spin” up your thoughts regarding the issue every time feels taxing. As opposed to a quick back and forth chit chat that addresses any concerns that come to mind and then closing that task out.
That it is intentional does not really help, because you still have to deal with the inherent awkwardness of not knowing if your tone and message come across correctly in a one-way conversation without feedback.
Reading stuff is so much quicker.
One college asks me if i have time to do a short video chat for the update i need; The coordination take sprobably a higher effort then just writing it down.
Otherwise you can just use whatever you have used already anyway.
Having something like this as main feature, means thats the default. In my opinion therefore not a good tool.
Putting in some effort on the sending side to express your thoughts as text makes things a lot more flexible for the receiver, and pays off big when you want more than one person to consume it.
It's the second heading, right at the top when you click the link - "Cut down on meetings & calls with voice messages, searchable transcriptions & async screen sharing"