Friday, August 3, 2012

Video Conferencing via Skype for Meetings

At work we have a monthly reporting and planning meeting.  We all come together and talk through what we've accomplished during the past month and what we plan to accomplish during the next.  My employer has been very supportive of me working from the road.  Recently we had the first monthly meeting since I've been gone.  Skype was the technology we used and it worked fabulously.  It isn't exactly like being there but I would recommend it to anyone who needs to be remote but stay connected.

Beware, the pictures aren't very flattering of anyone in them but they are good enough to illustrate how it worked for us.  The formal meeting was in a conference room in Utah.  The conference room is set up with a PC and a big screen monitor mounted on the wall.  There is a webcam mounted at the top of the monitor (the little black rectangle).  You can see most of this in the first picture below.  The PC sits in one of those cabinets and runs Skype.  My picture is on the monitor on the wall, larger than life.  I was reclining in a lounge chair on my mom's covered patio at the time.

The meeting's view of me.
The next picture shows what I saw during the meeting.  Again, not a great picture but good enough to feel almost present.  It really surprised me how well the sound worked.  The microphone in the conference room was so sensitive that when no one was talking I could hear the ticking of the clocks on the wall (see photo above).  The microphone being so good had a downside.  Whenever there was a side conversation the microphone picked it up and mungled all of the sound together.

My view of the meeting.
For now this arrangement is working great.  It will be interesting to see how it works when I am in Europe or Asia.  I'll post again later and let you know how it works.

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