I'm participating in an IEEE standards group Webex meeting at this moment, while I'm making this post. There are 19 people on the call from all over the world. I retired from a technical sales (engineering) job 18 months ago, but I'm still very involved with professional, public service, and hobby groups and busier than ever. To assist with hosting local hobby group meetings, I pay for a Webex "Starter" account, since this allows recording of sessions and provides some other benefits over a free account.
It's difficult to accurately communicate emotion via textual means
, so collaboration methods which use live audio and video are much better when making complex decisions.
I find virtual (Webex, Zoom, etc.) collaboration tools to be the best method for most general group meetings for several reasons:
- Participants do not have to travel to a common location.
- A wide range of presentation methods (Powerpoint, text documents, audio, static images, saved video, and live video) can be used.
- Any participant can be allowed to present information.
- All participants can view and hear the material equally. Everyone is in the front row of the meeting.
- Information can be looked up at any time by participants on their attached computers. This allows real-time resolution of issues which might take quite a while if people were meeting in person (without their computers) or via email.
- Meetings can be recorded, allowing those who could not participate live to view the meeting or take notes at a later time.
Text messaging is useful for immediate very short communication, but similar to shouting at someone across a room it's not useful for making long-term decisions where you want to save the communication for future reference.
Physical in-person meetings are better for improving emotional communication and developing personal relationships, but virtual meetings with webcams are nearly as good and better when a pandemic or geographical distancing makes such physical meetings difficult.
Bill