- 📆 Oct 8, 2019
- for thoughtbot, Inc
☝ 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.
- https://whereby.com/
- formerly
appear.in
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 😛