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

[Mabel Liang (mabel]

Wow!  I'm totally surprised at the $10,000 price tag!

I live in the same community as Phil Dowds, and I'm one of the 
facilitators.  We just had a General Meeting (GM) on Sunday.

We've typically had two facilitators for our in-person GM's.  At 
yesterday's meeting, they were doing quite a bit of conferring, because 
we had a difficult topic.  The 2nd facilitator was also keeping the 
queue of who wanted to speak.

We've added a third person (not necessarily from the facilitation team) 
to be Zoom watcher.  That person lets the facilitators know when someone 
has their virtual hand raised so they can be added to the queue.  And 
reads chats aloud if necessary.  (And deals with other technical issues, 
although I don't know what's come up.)

We've said that what is said in chat isn't considered part of the 
meeting, so that people don't have their attention split between the 
speaking and the reading.  But occasionally there's something that can't 
be conveyed by someone taking their turn.  Someone got to a busy street 
and needed to communicate _something_ (I have no memory of what).  If 
you want something to be an official part of the meeting and get into 
the minutes, it has to be verbalized.

At the facilitator debrief we were talking about how to share visual 
information, like making a list of questions as they arise.  For 
in-person meetings we did that with a flip chart.  This past meeting the 
Zoom watcher was trying to do it on the Zoom whiteboard, but those of us 
in person couldn't see it.  We floated ideas like having a flipchart 
that has a laptop pointed at it as a Zoom participant.  What seems like 
the most promising is to have the flipchart and then have the Zoom 
watcher also type that content into the chat.

---------
In case this information is buried in the archives, we have an Owl and a 
big screen TV.

And I disagree with Phil about the "good-old-days" having higher quality 
meetings.

Hope that helps!

-- Mabel :-)

 mabel [at] twomeeps.com
 Mabel Liang
 Software Engineer turned Gardener
Cornerstone Village Cohousing
Cambridge, MA

On 2023-11-14 13:20, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L wrote:

> > Philip Dowds  - (rpdowds [at] comcast.net) is the author of the message 
> > below:
>
> > Your best group dynamics facilitators may not be your most facile Zoom 
> > jockeys.  If you want to do the tricky Zoom stuff -- captioning, 
> > recording, break-outs, screen sharing, whiteboards, mute all, whatever 
> > -- it's often better to have an "expert" Zoom jockey working with the 
> > facilitator.
>
> Exactly. Our Zoom meetings are much better when we have two 
> facilitators, one who does the traditional job of steering the 
> discussion, and decision-making and a second who responds to all the 
> technical connection issues, uses the chat to help people, and alerts 
> the facilitator when there was a question in the chat that needs 
> attention.
>
> I don't remember anyone mentioning the Chat -- it has been very 
> helpful. Not as intrusive as talking on the side but you can share 
> information that might help the discussion but doesn't need to be 
> discussed. You can also send private messages and to everyone messages.
>
> One team of 3 that I worked with used text messages the same way. One 
> person was presenting and the meeting members were making suggestions 
> for moving forward that were very good and possible to accept 
> immediately if we all agreed. We were texting to indicate agreement and 
> some adjustments. It was very efficient and effective if challenging. 
> Two conversations at the same time. But it meant we didn't need to stop 
> or discuss it later. Many people  use the chat the same way.
>
> On the whole Zoom calls have become much smoother as everyone knows how 
> to use it better. And we keep learning new things. I just learned about 
> being able to turn off my own video in my view. So it takes time to 
> learn the software -- you can absorb it all at once.
>
> > Recall that real people in real rooms was the gold standard before 
> > 2020; video conferencing was a runner up normally reserved for 
> > insurmountable distances.
>
> But video conferencing had been growing for many years. Webinars as 
> well as team meetings in corporations and large institutions. A 
> sociologist would know when things began to change but It was 18 years 
> ago that I saw an SAP conference room with their video set up. Each 
> seat had a microphone and screen and there was a large screen on the 
> wall. With internationally based participants, everyone could see 
> everyone on the screen. SAP has team leaders who are not even in the 
> same country as their team. They may only see each other every 2 months 
> in person.
>
> When we began agonizing over the question of spending $10,000 on 
> technology for hybrid meetings there was disbelief on the part of our 
> tech experts. They spent their days managing hybrid meetings for all 
> kinds of clients -- the questions we were asking were not even raised. 
> It was sort of surreal for them to listen to the doubts and assertions 
> of our inexperienced members.
>
> I love Zoom meetings, frankly. I've not found in-person meetings 
> better. On Zoom I can hear everyone and when someone can't be heard 
> it's because they need to sit closer to their computer -- a simple 
> solution. It also feels more organized. It feels like everyone is 
> sitting around the same "conference table". We have too many members to 
> sit in a circle or any shape that allows everyone to see and hear each 
> other. Some sit in the corners on soft furniture. Some perch in the 
> kitchen so they can connect their laptops to outlets. Some sit closer 
> to the kid's room so they can watch children. There is nothing 
> organized about the in-person meetings of 35 people.
>
> Perhaps someone knows about the tipping point of how many people in a 
> meeting really feel that they are in an intimate meeting before it is 
> just too complicated.
>
> Ah, the $10,000. We decided to go with a set up of components that 
> worked well together but were independent so they could be used for 
> many other things so we wouldn't feel obligated to do hybrid meetings 
> if we didn't like them. So we were essentially stocking up on 
> mix-and-match technology.
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
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