Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Hybrid Zoom Meetings - Need Help

[Chris Hansen (itschrishansen]

We at Burlington CoHousing, East Village in Vermont have tried all-zoom,
all-in-person and hybrid.
We vastly prefer in-person because the quality of the meeting is
significantly higher. We also found it distracting and disconcerting to
have people cooking or doing chores during the meeting (their level of
engagement was lower or minimal, it was hard to engage in anything
interactive and no guarantee they had heard anything etc). We value the
relationship-building in-person meetings bring. Most people actually seemed
to prefer in-person meetings.
At the same time, though want to be accessible to those who are sick or
away or in a situation where in-person attendance is not possible
So-
right now our meetings are generally in-person with the ability to request
hybrid, in which case hybrid will be set up.
We use an owl (right now we use one that belongs to a resident- we may buy
one if there’s enough $ and it seems warranted).

On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 5:24 AM Bob Leigh <bobleigh [at] twomeeps.com> wrote:

> And I can attest that when a group at Cornerstone announces an all-Zoom
> meeting, Phil Dowds is sure to ask, did we waste our money buying an Owl?
>
> Bob
>
> On Sun, Nov 12, 2023 at 8:55 PM Philip Dowds <rpdowds [at] comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > I remember the good old days, up through 2019, when we all came into the
> > room together.  Seemed easy, since we all lived within a couple hundred
> > yards of each.  On rare occasions, someone was temporarily out of town,
> but
> > really wanted to participate anyway, so we rigged up something on a
> > laptop.  But the thought of all virtual never occurred to us.
> >
> > Pre-Zoom, there were probably fewer of us attending.  But the quality of
> > the meeting was higher.  One must admit, quantity over quality is
> certainly
> > an American tradition.
> >
> > ------------------
> > Thanks, RPD
> >
> > On November 12, 2023 at 4:34:53 PM, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L (
> > cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org) wrote:
> >
> > > On Nov 11, 2023, at 8:46 AM, Philip Dowds <rpdowds [at] comcast.net> 
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > At Wolf Creek, do you allow participants to leave their cameras off?
> >
> > I also wonder about this. When people have their cameras off most show a
> > still image, usually a headshot, or Zoom shows the name they signed in
> by.
> > At first, people would only turn off their cameras during breaks. But
> more
> > people have started doing this. One concern is that we don’t really know
> if
> > they are there (counting toward quorum) or paying attention. I don’t like
> > looking at myself during the whole meeting so leaving the video off is
> > tempting. I don’t have any evidence that people not listening — sometimes
> > they are cooking or taking care of children. But I play solitaire which
> is
> > pretty much the same thing.
> >
> > The bigger problem is that I can’t always tell who is speaking if I can’t
> > see their lips moving. This is a problem with hybrid meetings, too,
> because
> > the camera doesn’t focus on the person speaking. The image of all the
> > people in the room is as small as one person on the screen.
> >
> > We have higher attendance with Zoom meetings than in-person meetings and
> > people who are away do often tune into meetings, as well as prospective
> > buyers. I don’t like rules that say people have to do this or that to
> prove
> > this or that because it usually doesn’t. If people are required to sit in
> > front of the computer and be visible as a talking head will they pass up
> > the meeting? I would rather have a headshot than no person.
> >
> > Sharon
> > ----
> > Sharon Villines
> > Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> > http://www.takomavillage.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
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