Sunday, August 12, 2007
Meeting in the corporate cyber-space
I wrote this one day these week.
I spent several hours in meetings. That's not too unusual in this day and age for a corporate citizen (I figure since I'm a citizen of one country and resident in another, I might as well be a corporate citizen... shades of Jennifer Government). Today's meetings drove me nuts. The first one was scrambled by technical difficulties. The second one is detail-intensive but went along well because we've got the process down flat. The third meeting bored me until I went back to work and just let the speaker speak to
me.
The first meeting's technical difficulties are endemic. (I often have trouble differentiating between endemic and systemic, but I think I've got it down now.) We are a large corporation, we have people in a number of locations, and yet, unless it is a company-wide meeting (meaning we'll all supposed to attend), the technology is not really supporting our requirements.
If your meeting is a low-priority, you can use the conference call option; this is the most reliable method. It is also pretty flexible because every meeting room has a phone and if you can't get one of the meeting rooms, participants can sit in their cubicles.
The next level up involve a video conference. There are a few, well-used meeting rooms that can be used for video conferences. The video conference seems to be easier for participation, there is something about the visual that improves participation and understanding. We have a very limited number of video-conference rooms and they are heavily used. The technology, for the most part, works though we do have some transmission issues and the images transmitted are a tad fuzzy and disjointed because the transmission cuts in and out.
Finally, if you have a fairly large meeting with more formal presentations, we have a couple of rooms that can be used. The tools are apparently undocumented and each time I've participated in one of these, the first ten to fifteen minutes are spent finding someone who knows how to set everything up so that the presentation can be viewed in all locations. Today, we spent time trying to connect the two remote sites. It wasn't that the people didn't know how to set up the conference, but the technology just wasn't being able to carry the load. We could connect both remote groups with limited capacity or one remote group with full capacity.
After fifteen minutes, I left to join another meeting - a phone conference. I sat at my cubicle and answered questions, listened for information, and arranged my day's work.
Right after that, I dialed into a webinar, the new distributed seminar/presentation mode. There are several tools for these webinar presentations. Some perform better than others. I prefer the automated dial-in to the operator-assisted option. More than once I've seen the presentation start on my computer screen while I'm left listening to canned music.
I spent several hours in meetings. That's not too unusual in this day and age for a corporate citizen (I figure since I'm a citizen of one country and resident in another, I might as well be a corporate citizen... shades of Jennifer Government). Today's meetings drove me nuts. The first one was scrambled by technical difficulties. The second one is detail-intensive but went along well because we've got the process down flat. The third meeting bored me until I went back to work and just let the speaker speak to
me.
The first meeting's technical difficulties are endemic. (I often have trouble differentiating between endemic and systemic, but I think I've got it down now.) We are a large corporation, we have people in a number of locations, and yet, unless it is a company-wide meeting (meaning we'll all supposed to attend), the technology is not really supporting our requirements.
If your meeting is a low-priority, you can use the conference call option; this is the most reliable method. It is also pretty flexible because every meeting room has a phone and if you can't get one of the meeting rooms, participants can sit in their cubicles.
The next level up involve a video conference. There are a few, well-used meeting rooms that can be used for video conferences. The video conference seems to be easier for participation, there is something about the visual that improves participation and understanding. We have a very limited number of video-conference rooms and they are heavily used. The technology, for the most part, works though we do have some transmission issues and the images transmitted are a tad fuzzy and disjointed because the transmission cuts in and out.
Finally, if you have a fairly large meeting with more formal presentations, we have a couple of rooms that can be used. The tools are apparently undocumented and each time I've participated in one of these, the first ten to fifteen minutes are spent finding someone who knows how to set everything up so that the presentation can be viewed in all locations. Today, we spent time trying to connect the two remote sites. It wasn't that the people didn't know how to set up the conference, but the technology just wasn't being able to carry the load. We could connect both remote groups with limited capacity or one remote group with full capacity.
After fifteen minutes, I left to join another meeting - a phone conference. I sat at my cubicle and answered questions, listened for information, and arranged my day's work.
Right after that, I dialed into a webinar, the new distributed seminar/presentation mode. There are several tools for these webinar presentations. Some perform better than others. I prefer the automated dial-in to the operator-assisted option. More than once I've seen the presentation start on my computer screen while I'm left listening to canned music.
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