Video Conferencing Tool Exploration

2019-10-08_remote-video_wuts-gud.md

Explore Video Conferencing Tools

• 📆 Oct 8, 2019
• for thoughtbot, Inc

Why

☝ In the spirit of continuous improvement, I would like to explore video conferencing tools to use at work with clients, to see if there are other options available that provide a more smooth, clear, and reliable experience. I am also interested to learn if there are options we could incorporate to improve specific conferencing scenarios, such as 1:1, large group, or small group video conferencing.

Video conferencing software as a whole is not perfect. We currently use Google Hangouts, as it provides a low-cost and relatively stable experience. There are often moments where communication is unintelligible due to technical interference, though not so much that the company has an incentive to change. As an aside, I already believe that we may not find an alternative that satisfies all of our needs, and may need to check back on this issue in the bright future when technology has solved this and all of our other problems 🌄.

For now, I would like to evaluate our options, and document where I feel they stand in terms of incorporation to our company culture.

Options

Zoom

• https://zoom.us/
• First 1:1 experience

Pluot

• https://meet.pluot.co/new

GoToMeeting

• https://www.gotomeeting.com/

Whereby

• https://whereby.com/
• formerly appear.in

WhereBy 1

https://whereby.com/

• no password is needed - you type in a name and email, and get emailed a one time login code
• the privacy settings seem to take privacy seriously! its human-centered! it gives me confirmations of the exact time and date that I chose to revoke consent for marketing materials, etc. I thought they handled that real cool.
• data - similarly, you can download and examine all the data they claim to collect from your use of the service. cool, a step in the right direction!

📹 ☕ This session was with myself and Matt. We used WhereBy in a 1:1 setting.

1. Connection was pretty great. There was a moment when quality dropped, and Id say the experience was about the same as Google Hangouts in terms of choppiness, frames lost, hitching, and how quickly the feed came back (satisfactory). Bad connection was rare, most of our experience was of very high quality video and audio.
2. Account setup, as above, is real simple and easy.
3. Inviting someone else is very easy, they dont even need to commit to registration
4. I used my work laptop (Ubuntu 18.04)
5. We also were connected from across coasts, Pacific and Eastern time.

Overall I really liked WhereBy, and will probably default to this for personal use for a while. It certainly needs some group / distributed evaluations, but its an excellent tool for remote 1:1 meetings.

Pluot 1

https://meet.pluot.co/new

• no password needed, in fact, no email needed either - just hit the site, start a video session, and get a link to invite people
  • essentially, no setup at all
• initial inspection of tools was a nice experience (for such a free and barrier-less app)
  • screen sharing works nice, really fluid (by myself)
  • other options provide good exposure to controls, settings, and allows inspection of packet loss / network connectivity
• I experienced some confusion with the branding. I start on the "Pluot" site but I am quickly switched to a "Daily.co" domain, and am getting adverts for the "Daily.co" video services.

📝 I havent yet used this with someone else, the above is just a "setup" phase

GoToMeeting 1

https://www.gotomeeting.com/meeting/join-meeting

⛔ 🐧 = 👎

• initial signup was clunky AF, too many ads, clickthroughs, forms, etc
  • and for all that ceremony, they diddnt even force me to verify my business email 🤷‍♀️
• creating initial meeting requires knowing a time ahead of time, or setting up a permanent meeting link
  • i chose permanent link, cuz scheduling one sounds really brittle and expensive
  • at least, i can make many permanent links, so thats not bad
• i tried inviting a guest (in a 2nd browser), so at least a guest doesnt require an account
  • the setup only involved microphone, and the UI seemed to suggest that there wouldnt be video
  • i wouldnt know, as when I started the meeting, i got a big error saying U CAN HAZ NO LINUX! ⛔ 🐧
    • fail, bye!

This concludes tests with Gotomeeting 👋

WhereBy 2

I was testing the setup for my original account, to prepare for a virtual coffe w/ Sid. After exiting, I saw this message:

                <li>Host up to 12 participants in your meetings</li>
                <li>Get 3 dedicated meeting rooms for different purposes</li>
                <li>Showcase your brand with customized room logo &amp; background</li>
                <li>Screen share while your team can still see you</li>
                <li>Access premium support for when you need help</li>

🤔 those dont strike me as great features for a Pro (presumably, paid) account. While Ive never had a meeting with >=12 people at thoughtbot, that limitation seems arbitrarily low. Only 3 rooms feels quite limited too. I am not sure if I care to showcase the brand in such meetings. Im not sure what premium support I would need for such a limited (simple!) platform.

I want to keep trying this platform because I like it, but Im already fearing it might be too limited for consistent use. For occasional use, Im not sure if it offers much beyond an alternative to switch to if the Google Hangout connection is bad in a 1:1. Otherwise, Im not sure if the cognitive load of maintaining use of two vid conf platforms is worth any "features" or improvements Id get from WhereBy.

---

In any event, Sid and I met on 11/08 using Whereby, and there were no problems. I had pretty much the same experience as with WhereBy 1, above.

Google

For today's virtual coffee w Eliza from Boston studio, I diddnt send any invites to other video platforms and just went with google. I was on a wired connection on my home desktop, and had a pretty poor connection. We had to drop and rejoin twice. There was a problem with my webcam mic after reconnecting the second time where I sounded like a chipmunk (its some kind of system level conflict with my audio "driver" in Ubuntu, its happened to me before with Slack or other voice / video chats using the same webcam).

Its really an outlier as I have a lot more experience with Google Meethangouts and there are perfectly stable connections often enough. Its just funny that during this ongoing video chat tests, my one experience with Google was the worst 😛