[leoedin]

From my point of view, he's right. Virtual meetings with more than 3 participants make back-and-forth discussions very hard. Interruptions aren't always negative - they're part of a natural conversation. In a situation where I'm talking, often an interruption will be to ask for clarification, or more information, and it'll come just as I start to move on to something else. The latency and awkwardness of video calls makes that hard to do. As a result, people talk more continuously and those little questions/requests for clarification don't ever get said.

Sure, there's people who feel it's their right to interrupt your thoughts. There's also people who feel it's their right to talk at everyone without stopping. Healthy conversation is a balancing act, and it's hard to get right in a group situation over video.

You can, of course, find ways round this. One on one calls, with shared screens, are often more productive if you're remote. Maybe large meetings are ultimately a bit pointless anyway?

[dv_dt]

I always found Zoom great for latency and communication. For some reason Google vid hangouts had us unintentionally interrupting each other more frequently - don't know if they've improved that now. I think it's one hidden reason Zoom got more popular so quickly over other vid conf offerings.

[rektide]

Latency is only one of the problems. Most of these services seem to handle audio in a way where they are picking one person as the speaker, and muting or ducking everyone else's audio. Practices like cooperative overlap are technologically inhibited.

[dv_dt]

Seems like a reasonable feature to more productive meetings in general? In-person meetings can degenerate to unproductive noise if people can't speak in turn. If you don't want the "talking stick" pattern there are other remote spaces where one can all meet online and have multiple conversations simultaneously.

[rektide]

Like what?

[dv_dt]

https://www.gather.town/ I feel like is one of the more mature, but there are multiple demos where locational audio meeting can happen.

https://www.meetup.com/blog/virtual-gathering-tools-for-your...