The Canada West Coast STC Fall Kickoff Meeting got off to a great start. The polished presenter from Adobe did a great job. He frequently asked if everyone on the remote meeting could hear and see everything. And he even gave us a brief look at stats showing how much the environmental footprint of this meeting was reduced with the use of remote meeting software.
The video from Rahel Bailie was done well, we could see AND hear that.
Then we saw many people in a room in downtown Vancouver start talking into a microphone. We were told that this was for the podcast that was going to be made of the meeting. They were quite animated people. I don’t know who they were - all of their name tags said Hi I’m “~_=~mn” from what I could see on the video feed. But there was NO AUDIO for the remote attendees to hear what was being said.
So in a remote meeting, this is when you type a message in the chat box to let people know there is a problem. The chat box was NOT AVAILABLE. Obviously you didn’t want to hear from the remote attendees. Of course we could have tried to un-mute the phone and talk to someone, but the meeting didn’t look interesting enough to increase the rudeness of the event by butting in.
So after giving it about 10 minutes - you were all very animated, but without sound - I hung up and surfed elsewhere. Others probably hung up. You may have recorded this meeting for a podcast I could find later, but I’m not convinced that’s worth the effort. I’m not convinced you were recording audio for the podcast either.
For the next remote meeting you will need to promise there will be AUDIO and someone manning the CHAT BOX in case there are problems, or it will not be worth attending.
Good start on the virtual chapter thing, but it needs work.
Read the program meeting review from the perspective of a local participant.
Follow up links
Editor’s note: The volunteers responded to Clara personally in the forum here: http://www.stcwestcoast.ca/index.php/forums/viewthread/42/. Karen Rempel started a new topic under the heading “Going green, going virtual, fostering community” here: http://www.stcwestcoast.ca/index.php/forums/viewthread/43/.
