Slashdot Mirror
What's Lost When a Meeting Goes Virtual
nbauman writes "This summer, NASA's Lunar Science Forum became the largest scientific gathering to embrace the new world of cyber meetings. The experience drew mixed reviews, according to a report in Science magazine. Mihály Horányi, who has been a regular, sat down at his computer at 1:45 p.m. on the first day of the conference and began talking into a webcam perched above the screen. 'Last year it was a performance. This year it meant staring at myself, being annoyed that I kept leaning in and out of the picture, and thinking, "Boy, am I getting old."' He and other participants say the virtual conference was a pale imitation of the real thing. At previous forums, 'You see your friends, you ask about their kids, and then the discussion flows into the science.' He participated much less this year, 2 hours a day. In addition to the physical challenge of sitting at one's computer for hours on end, participants say that their day jobs competed for their attention. 150 to 200 people "attended" at any one time. Even without distractions, the quality of the interaction was much lower than in person. 'I received a handful of short comments [from my talk] and had maybe one e-mail exchange,' Horányi recalls. One scientist who didn't present this year—and who listened to only one talk after the fact—said that he much prefers an in-person meeting because 'you get a much better sense of how the audience is reacting to what you're saying, especially any negative feedback.'"
After the second day's talks were over we got to watch Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon.
The griping about gossip being more important than the presentation is very real: a lot of science is the result of serendipitous conversations and meetings at conferences.
The same thing happens with conference calls. Adding video doesn't change the fact that you aren't in the same room as the other people. I don't see this working all that well until we get holodecks or something like that.
It is unwise to ascribe motive
I have done a number of meetings remotely, and it is just not the same (nor is it better).
Of course, it is cheaper, and if it is a question of attending remotely, or not at all, I go remotely.
It is a much better experience with immersive full room telepresence, but part of the reason for that is that you actually have to go to a telepresence unit so that, even if you are just down the hall, you are much more focused on the meeting.
High fives and after lunch farts.
Welcome to the future of working. You must be crammed into an open office every day to "enhance collaboration" but an annual conference you must attend virtually. I think someone has earned a bonus with all the money the company saved.
The bar meetings and such are very important parts of conferences or any gathering of folks who only know each other thru publishing, mailing lists, etc. or even various forums like slashdot and fark.
Aside from the obvious, it is great to put faces to names you only know from mailing lists, etc. as well as having real time discussions. The value of a meat space meet up is very high, and to have your employer cover part or all of the costs is even better.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
The story title talks about meetings.
The story is about some kind of conference.
At work we use Video rooms for meetings all the time and it works perfectly fine.
You don't sit behind your shitty web cam.
You have a giant screen, and a good view of everyone in the other room.
The point of a conference is never the content.
Never. Never.
The entire point of conferences is meeting people, networking, and discussing things face to face with your peers.
The content of the presentations is just there to give you something to think and talk about with the other participants.
This reminds me of a previous discussion on slashdot about congress telecommuting.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The Facebook Effect: Where you might think you are interacting with other humans, but you find you are really just interacting with a machine that is trying to reflect back yourself to you in order to fool you (in facebook's case to get you to linger your eyeballs longer). Rather than be actually a part of other people's lives, you are instead a passive observer of a manufactured reality. It's exciting in the same way that voyerism is exciting at first, but it is ultimatly unsatisfying to the soul.
Of course if you are an extroverted narcissist, this is the ultimate stage for you. Some of us hark back to the times when you could actually dread being invited to someone else's house only to have the host drag out the pictures of their life to show to a captive audience. With a virtual existance, the exhibitionist gets to *think* they are showing pictures and the audience gets to either satisfy their voyeristic subconscious habits or they get to ignore w/o offending. Maybe this is how it's meant to be?
A virtual conference is really the the same thing, only intersecting the professional part of your life. Kind of like phoning your friend to touch base instead of actually going to lunch because that would be too much of commitment.
I know it's not fashionable these days, but I found many of the conferences in Second Life to be almost as productive as RL versions and way more productive than video chat, etc... It's too bad that that platform lost focus and didn't continue to evolve. :(
This isn't merely a technological barrier but the wrong tool for the job. It sounds like the traditional in-person format is poorly translated into this technology, sure. But that doesn't mean technology is the problem. It probably means the meeting itself is trying to force its traditionally square peg into a round, digital hole.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
There is a benefit to large meetings. But clearly the limitations that mandate large concise time intense meetings do not exist in the virtual world. There is no reason to hold 50 presentations in a day and then have attendees select their favorite 5 which means the get to attend 15-20 over the week. Rather 200 presentations can be held over a month, and one can drop in for an hour when they are interesting.
This would also free up conferences for what they are best. Provided unstructured interaction between professionals. Honestly, too many conferences are so structured that I feel like they are made for elementary school students, or laborers who bill by the hour.
If the value of a conference is the interaction, then lets pay people to go to Hawaii for a week and interact, and not cover the real purpose with these fake structured meetings.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
and disease.
An audience reacts largely to your performance, not the material.
Is the point of these gatherings entertainment or communication? I see people complaining about not being entertained...
"The value is in the halls, not in the presentations" - this was a comment in an article on academic conferences (Let there be stoning!, pdf link). Unfortunately, the article hits the nail on the head - most academic talks are atrocious.
And mingling in the halls is still a human activity - you really don't like to do it virtually. It's like going to a virtual bar with your friends. Even if you have the best cocktail at home, the crowd, the sounds, etc. all play a role in keeping you in the mood.
The only advantage I see is in reducing some of the ridiculous conference registration rates I have seen (I'm looking at you IEEE - student registration of $400?). But I don't expect this to take off.
"the physical challenge of sitting at one's computer for hours"
Really? You still haven't figured out how to do that without fatigue?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You only get bullshit responses from dumbasses who can't do any work, besides running their mouth in meetings.
Those who know and can do just sits there and waits for those with touchy feelings to be talked over and done for.
Very large companies have been doing teleconferencing for years. Many have been doing weekly video conferences via Tandberg VC systems for a decade successfully.
Honestly, there is ZERO reason to force everyone to drive to one location for a conference except for the drinking and dining on the company dime afterwards.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The real problem is the attitude that we MUST decide which is best, and shun the failure of the other
Each have pros and cons : Virtual meetings are much cheaper, easier to setup on the fly, and are more malleable in size; able to accommodate two people without bogarting a conference room, or expandable beyond the number of bodies that can physically fit into a single conference room. Meanwhile, meatspace meetings must be setup months in advance to ensure everyone can make it, require a lot more expenses, potential arguments over the proper location, plus all of the potential pitfalls of travel (lost luggage, delayed/canceled flights, outdated GPS directions sending you to the wrong place, etc.)
But as previously discussed, actual human interaction has a LOT more potential to engender real ideas and changes. It allows us to better know our colleagues and understand each other. If a buddy of mine tells me that I dun goofed, I'm a lot more likely to take an honest look at my work and try to fix the problem than if I had received the same message from some random stranger on the other side of the country, to whom I've never before spoken. Maybe that's a problem on my part, but I'm certainly not the only one (as I've been the random stranger trying to correct someone else, only to receive a "Who the fuck are you" response.)
What needs to happen is utilizing both systems to their strengths. If you're a part of a big project, encompassing hundreds of workers across several geographical locations, and spanning several years, start with a big in-person conference. Make sure everyone knows their peers from different sectors, understands what roles everyone fills, how they operate, etc. Give it 2-3 days, include some after-hours meetups, and get things started right. Schedule these annually (or biannually) to introduce new team members, work through any major sticking points, and keep things flowing well. In between those, use virtual meetings for weekly status meetings, or 1 on 1 discussion between engineers at different locations.
This signature is false.
Film at eleven...? Not quite.
Trust us to forget the obvious, and having to re-learn it the hard way. Learning is not a bad thing. Declaring the new fancy thing the standard before we have the slightest idea what'll happen and then having to slowly and painfully get rid of it, would be a lot harder.
But we can take the opportunity to learn, and we really ought to. So you tried, so you failed. When is the paper coming out?
I'm guessing the latency, and the fact that you can see your own face are messing with the meeting atmosphere here.
It would probably go better if you didn't have a constant view of your face, and focused on something else while you were "meeting" (imagine something like teamspeak, but with faces and you're doing work instead of gaming)
I get too distracted wondering if anyone else is not wearing any pants.
On a real meeting, you fly 1. Class with your misstress, you are away from the wife and the meeting itself is in 3D.
A pale comparision, indeed.
Well the answer to your face going out of frame is a picture in front of the camera. I could alternate between a normal picture, your head floating in space, frogs, (for this time of year) Jack-o-Lantern. I bet unless you are talking, no one will ever notice.
I thought a conference was an excuse to meet in the hallways and for beer later. Ever been to a Gordon Research Conf? The sessions are just a opening of ideas to talk about later.
I dont know if I trust an online conference with them
I've had to do it on a few different jobs, where I was hired by a distant company to provide support for a customer in my area. For them I telecommuted for meetings etc.
I think one point that's been missed so far is that you only have a limited path of communication. It's generally one person talking to one other person. Interrupting may be rude but sometimes it's necessary, especially when you have people that ramble or that are being unproductive by repeating the same things over and over. It also gives others the opportunity to briefly voice their agreement. Things like "it's a problem when you do this". "You're the only one that's had any..." (and two other people suddenly speak up to disagree)
Also people don't behave the same when they're online with someone. It's pretty well known that some people act one way on a forum or in a chat room and are completely different in person. Same thing applies to video conferencing. But in this case I think it's a positive change. People that would normally be timid in a personal meeting get more brave and participate more, and will push their opinions harder. It really helps timid people contribute more. Otherwise these people get dominated by those with a stronger outgoing personality.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
...when space travel is common they will be the main "meeting" method.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
May be?
I have a mail filter that dumps anything with "Webinar" in the title to the spam folder. Most of them are infomercials. They're invariably too long for the information contained.
This, in fact, is the big problem with "online education" - no post production cutting.
So what is the best system for multiparty cyber meetings?
Humans are social creatures so there is often business value in spending some money to allow people to socialize, hang out, and eat and drink together. That's where face to face meetings are irreplaceable.
However, if the work is well understood and there aren't personality conflicts that need to be worked out and team cooperation to be built, then teleconferencing is much more effective. In person meetings and whiteboards facilitate "winging it" whereas teleconferencing (I mean with screens sharing, not just voice) tends to encourage getting your information into at least somewhat organized electronic form. This can be harder, but it's harder because it's not allowing you to be as lazy as just sitting around talking and maybe scrawling an incomplete and inaccurate diagram on the whiteboard that you never bother finishing or archiving for future reference.
I wish my employer would spring for a bit more business travel, but I would be lying if I said it would make me more productive.
I should also mention that instant messaging with presence indication is also an essential component of working across geographic distance. I'm much more effective working with people when glance at a list of names on my screen shows me instantly who's available at this moment. The people who are never "online" in IM require a much more inconvenient phone call/voicemail/email/walk down the hall.
I have certainly wasted time at in person meetings waiting idly by while someone I wanted to talk to was busy talking to someone else about some topic that didn't require my attention.
where'd the free donuts go?
Misleading Title. Should be: What's Lost When a Conference Goes Virtual. Nothing of value is lost during a meeting because meetings are near worthless!
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Oh... there was a meeting? Me, I guess.
I have an opinionated engineer or an admin listen instead of participating in telecons. The same people continue their same refusal to make a decision, and I can't hear what they're saying when they're mumbling 6 feet from the microphone. I'm not far from throwing the "reasonable accomodation" card; I've got a bit of hearing loss, and it's stupid to do a telecon when the people talking don't care and the people who care can't hear.
body language is very important. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqqiDw58NSE
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Like all the new people who were able to attend because they could still care for those children you were going to ask about. I think the solution is BETTER, multi camera, high resolution video conferencing tools, not crawling back into a cave.
What's missing? Usually, my pants!
"Lame" - Galaxar
What this all means is that you can't get laid at a virtual conference. And for a lot of the attendees, they don't have a lot of other chances.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.