[rmorlok]

I work on a team that has members distributed across two locations. We use the policy described above, but there is a flip side to this problem. Most of our developers are one location with a 1/6 minority in another. The larger group of developers loses the advantages of face-to-face communication for meetings in favor of equal footing for everyone. Is that a net improvement on quality of communication? I don't know, but I'd rather meet with my colleagues in adjacent cubes face-to-face rather than over the phone the way we do now.

[chadgeidel]

As a developer "on the other side" I can tell you that you would be surprised how hard it is to follow along at these meetings.

For example: Most of the meetings I attend are largely ad-hoc with printed material being handed out at the time of the meeting - usually not available on the company intranet (or emailed) until after the meeting. It makes it immensely difficult to follow along and contribute in a meaningful manner.

Honestly, there are many benefits to having everyone "remote" for a group meeting. It focuses the meeting. After the meeting you still have the luxury of walking over to your co-workers's desk and chatting in detail about the problem.

[mawhidby]

I've noticed that for my team, some of the bigger meetings seem to attract the problems described in the article, whereas our scrum meetings are more on-topic and brief. It would seem that for our case the 'everyone calls in' solution would work better in the bigger meetings, while we keep the face-to-face interaction in the scrums.