Why Video Conferencing is so 2019

You should throw out that expensive conferencecam and turn off the huge conference widescreen TV. Stop doing hybrid meetings. Video conferencing is so 2019 and it should never be brought back.

During the pandemic 2020—2022 we all learned to work together alone. Sitting in our homes, we got used to not only having the occasional meeting or conversation over the internet, but doing your entire workday with colleges in a box on the screen. Sure, we had all had our occasional Skype meetings in the past, but doing it all day every day was to most of us something entirely new, and we managed to get used to it super-fast.

We are now in post-pandemic (or at least post-lockdown) times, where most companies have moved to a hybrid work setup with employees shifting more or less freely between their couch or kitchen table and their company office desk. We bring with us the experience from the pandemic that working in separate physical locations is fine, but what else did we learn that can improve how we interact with colleges over the net?

The Power of Gallery View

The default gallery view in a Teams or Zoom meeting creates an egalitarian setup where everyone, regardless of their position or salary level, gets to occupy the same amount of screen real estate, making no one seem more important than the other. Female colleges?have witnessed to me that the pandemic online meetings gave them airtime more equal to their male peers in a way that?pre-pandemic physical meetings never did.

Most of us have some time experienced or witnessed subtle acts of disrespect during a meeting, when a bully ignores the person talking, maybe even chatting with their table neighbor. Letting out a sigh and shifting your seating positions can be enough to discourage the person speaking, let alone interrupting them altogether. Such bullying is much harder to pull off in a subtle way during an online meeting, if carried out it becomes so obvious to the other people on the meeting that the bully runs a high risk of being called out. Online meetings when done right can in some respects really be superior to physical ones.

Video Conferencing is so 2019

In a distant past, we used to have video conference calls. A bunch of people in one office sat down in a conference room with an expensive conference camera and a widescreen TV, and a bunch of people in another office sat down in their conference room in front of their widescreen TV. Then the bosses of the respective bunches of people took turns talking loudly to the people on their screens, and after a while the bosses let someone with some actual knowledge talk loudly to the screen for a while. Some information sharing did happen during these calls, but nothing much else got done.

The amazing thing that happened during the pandemic is that we learned to not just talk but actually work together over the internet: we workshopped and pair programmed and had feedback sessions over Teams. Having come back to our offices as we started working hybrid, we sometimes lose track of the good things we figured out due to the pandemic: hybrid meetings being one of the more annoying resulting compromises, with some people on their computers, and some stuck in the video conference setting.

Two Offices: Us and Them

Humans are naturally prone to unconsciously think in terms of Us and Them, in-groups and out-groups, and this comes in effect during video conference meetings. I witnessed myself being affected by this when I by chance attended a weekly meeting from the company's second office. During that meeting I found myself agreeing more than usual with the people that I this time shared the room with, and my usual bunch that was this time on the widescreen TV appeared less clever than I normally found them. Being in that second office had made me switch my in- and out-groups, and this noticeably affected my perception. And you know what? A Teams or Zoom meeting in gallery view effectively prevents this Us and Them-thinking from happening in the first place.

Big Boss on the Screen

When a higher level manager gets invited to talk to a group in a conference call, you often end up in situation where the face of the manager, sitting in front of their laptop's built-in web camera, fills the entire widescreen TV of the conference room. The 1 meter tall face of the manager on the screen starts talking, and every nuance of difference in position and salary level gets amplified a hundred times. If there ever was a chance for conversation and open dialogue in the meeting, the Big Boss on the Screen setting killed it. But try that same meeting in Teams gallery mode, with the manager being one of many faces of equal size: You will find a much more relaxed group feeling free to ask the manager questions and even bringing forth suggestions for improvements. Which is want we want, right?

TV Studio Discussion

In a hybrid meeting where the principal participants are in the conference room, and a few attendants are remote on their computers, you will see the opposite to the Big Boss thing happening. The conference room participants are having the meeting, they might be having some very good discussions, while the remote attendees are having a really hard time getting their two cents across, let alone being active in the conversation. The remote participants are not in the meeting on equal terms, they might as well be watching a studio discussion on TV, with the opportunity to throw in some discussion topics. And guess what, gallery view would have prevented that!

Be Individuals Together

So—are we not allowed to join meetings from conference rooms? My answer to that is: Oh yes we are! It is a great feeling to share the room with the people you're meeting. But join the online meeting on your own laptops and web cams. Leave the widescreen TV off. Make sure that just one of you have audio on (both mic and speaker) while the rest remain on mute and speaker volume zero. You will be having a great group meeting with the remote people, while enjoying the physical company of your present colleges. You will get the focus of the conference room and still get all the bully-stopping, us and them-preventing, equalizing effects of the Teams or Zoom gallery view. Hello beautiful post-pandemic hybrid work world, no one wants the video conferencing of 2019 back!

I'm aware that this post relates only to people in office work professions who spend their time in meetings when they are not hacking away at keyboards. But hey, you are reading an article on LinkedIn, so chances are big that you are one of them. In a follow-up article I intend to share my top ten online meeting tips.