Remote Meeting

I was at work when I quickly clocked out to do faux work. Well, technically, it was still legitimate work. School work is work, but it's not work work. Anyways. Enough on work.

For my communications class, my group was required to meet using some remote service to discuss our group project. There are actually a lot of great media we could have used to do this, and I partially regret we didn't look into other methods more, but we just used Google+ since we all already had an account.

Overall, the meeting went well. It could have gone better if we'd all done more work before the meeting that we could have reviewed, but we did nail down some valuable goals for our team. We set deadlines easier than we would have been able to via text or email. We reviewed one of Alexia's documents in real-time, giving quick feedback that we were able to give prompt clarification on if needed.

I've used the screen share option on Google before when talking with my family, and it was as usual in business settings as it was in personal matters. My only complaint was that because the document was on my team member's computer, I couldn't just click and fix errors I saw. I had to describe to her where exactly I was looking. Another form of media (e.g. GoogleDocs) would have easily fixed this issue. Next time.

Another drawback was that our group kept on losing connection to one of our team members. We'd keep going, then have to catch him back up when he popped onto the Google Hangout again. I could see how that could be extremely frustrating in projects that are more intense. I would probably look at either switching platforms to minimize the problem, or just require all group members to find the best possible internet connection available.

That, or just meet in person. Honestly, so much more gets done that way. Obviously in circumstances where physical meetings are not possible, I'd be grateful the option of remote meetings. But if I have a choice, physical meetings are the way to go.

My brother-in-law showed me this clip over the past summer. The only reason it's funny is because it is entirely, 100%, not-exaggerated-even-a-little-bit accurate.  In fact, I showed my group the video after our business was completed (using the screen share option, I might add). After wards, when we were saying goodbye, the same thing that happened to the main guy in the video happened to me. I feel you, man. The struggle is real.