[dtgriscom]

For the past decade I've worked for a company whose headquarters is 500 miles away. I have 3-6 video meetings a day with engineers at the headquarters (as well as all over the world).

Until the pandemic, I visited headquarters every few months to catch up with the teams. I found that in informal chats (in the halls, walking into someone's office, having lunch) I discovered so much that never came up during video calls. It's similar to, but worse than, formal in-person meetings with agendas; there's an activation energy people need to overcome to bring up something that may seem small but is actually critical to the project.

Someone in a video meetings with their camera off is even worse; you have almost no emotional connection with them, and it's natural for them to only "speak if spoken to".