Shared posts

03 Dec 17:51

A Distributed Meeting Primer

by rands

As a leader who primarily values team health, I place great value on the weekly 1:1 because it’s where I assess health. It’s my highest bandwidth meeting, and historically the slight to significant lag omnipresent in video conferencing impeded that bandwidth. It stilted the conversation.

The micro-second of lag was an omnipresent reminder of the distance.
Combined with the incredibly predictable audio-video gymnastics that accompanied the start of these meetings with the equally predictable quip, “There has got to be a better way.”

In the past three years, my perception is video conferencing is a solved problem. The combination of mature networking infrastructure and well-designed software (I primarily use Zoom) has mostly eliminated the lag of video conference and significantly decreased A/V gymnastics.

We still have work to do.

Remote

Let’s start with the word: remote. Remote team. Remote worker. The definition means “situated far from the main centers of the population,” which in the context of the workplace is usually factually inaccurate. A remote team or human is simply a team or person who is not at headquarters, but it’s the first definition that most people mean when they say remote, and that’s the first problem.

Let’s start by agreeing to two ideas:

First: let’s call these humans teams distributed teams. Distributed is a boring word, but it is in that boringness that we solve one issue. Remote implies far from the center, whereas distributed means elsewhere.

Second: Let’s agree that no matter what we call the situation that the humans who are elsewhere are at a professional disadvantage.1 There is a communication, culture, and context tax applied to the folks who are distributed.2 Your job as a leader to actively invest in reducing that tax.

Good? Let’s start with fixing meetings.

The Many People Meeting

The use case I’m going to talk about is a complex and wasteful one: the many people meeting. Much of the following prescriptive tactical advice applies to the 1:1 meetings, but let’s focus where there is the most pain, the most cost, and the most room for improvement.

In the many people meeting, you have two locations: Host and Distributed. Host is where the majority of the humans are located, and Distributed are the humans on the various other ends of a video conference call.

I’ve already written about the rules for the type of meeting here. I’d suggest reading that article with the following challenge: how do we make this meeting the same experience so as to create the same amount of value for the Host and the Distributed?

My advice, which is both lived and collected via Twitter, falls into three categories: Pre-Meeting, During, and Post-Meeting.

Pre-Meeting

  • Don’t chintz on audio/video hardware and networking.3
  • As the Host, schedule meetings at X:05 or X:35 and get there at X:00 to make sure all technology is set up for a distributed meeting. Not only does this make sure the meeting starts on time, but it sends an important signal. How often have you had a meeting where seven minutes in someone asks, “Where’s Andy?” Well, Andy is distributed, and no one turned on the video camera. More importantly, Andy has been sitting in his home office for the last seven minutes wondering Did they forget me?
  • Set sensible defaults in your software. Default your microphone and audio to off when you enter a new meeting.
  • Check your background. Anything distracting behind you? Fix it.
  • Is the whiteboard in play? Great. Make sure it’s readable to distributed folks before the meeting.

During

  • Assign a Spotter on the Host side. This is the human responsible for paying attention to the distributed folks and looking for visual cues they are ready to speak.
  • Understand the acoustic attributes of a room. First time this particular set of humans are meeting in a distributed fashion? Do a microphone check for everyone right at the start. If there is horrible background noise on the Distributed-side, headphones are helpful.
  • Whoever is not speaking, hit mute. Microphones often capture more sound than you expect. Especially typing. Wait, who is typing? Same protocol as if everyone is in the same room. No laptops except for the note taker.
  • When focus shifts to the whiteboard, confirm that distributed folks can see the whiteboard. Another excellent job for the Spotter.

Post-Meeting

  • For a first time meeting with these humans or in this space, ask how it went for everyone. Fix things that are broken.
  • They can’t hear? Investing in fixing bad audio in conference rooms. Especially in large Host rooms, multiple microphones can capture the strangest set of sounds. At a prior gig, the board room had microphones built into the table. One Exec liked to click their pen during the meeting under the table. For Distributed folks, it was a deafening CLICK CLICK CLICK that the Host room couldn’t even hear.
  • Given the likelihood that the Distributed folks missed something during the meeting – which is a thing to be fixed – the distribution of the meeting notes are a critical feedback loop for everyone in the room.
  • The room with the most people disconnects last. Respect.4

A Fact of Working Life

Why are we having this meeting? If the answer is, “We’ve always had this meeting,” then that’s a different problem and another article. The answer is likely, “This set of humans needs to be together to achieve a thing, and that thing is better achieved with these humans together.”

Humans together. Not sitting on the other side of Slack or email, but together. Doing what humans do best: gathering context, arguing, listening, debating, whiteboarding, arguing some more, and eventually arriving at the informed decision. Maybe.

Is a meeting the right solution to your particular decision? I get that it’s our default power move, but do you really need a meeting? There appears to be a new tool or service launched every week designed for Distributed teams. Is there a different approach to getting to your decision that doesn’t involve a meeting? No? Ok…

Much of the leadership work I’ve done around Distributed teams are not resolving concerns about how the audio/visual works in a meeting; it’s how a Distributed team feels treated by Headquarters. It’s never one thing, it’s a long list of grievances that combine into an erroneous, but the very real perception that a Distributed team is somehow less important.

Much of the above advice is tactical. Simple acts to facilitate better communication, but the combination of all the advice supports a broader goal: by making sure every human in the meeting has equal access to the communication and the context, we send a clear message that being Distributed doesn’t matter. There is no measurable difference if you are in the Host room or Distributed.


  1. Disclaimer. For this article, I am using a distributed team scenario where there is a headquarters. There is a base of operations that contains a good chunk of the humans. There is a version of distributed where everyone in the company is distributed around the world. That is super interesting, but I’ve never experienced it. There’s a chance that the advice in this article is useful in all distributed, but buyer beware. 
  2. And there are distinct advantages, too. 
  3. Think about how much you’re paying the team and then think about how much it costs you to have them inefficiently communicate with each other on crappy infrastructure. 
  4. I’m confident I missed essential tips and tricks. Comment on this post, or join the Rands Leadership Slack and join #remote-work channel. No, I didn’t name it. 
29 Jan 02:13

So…when do we become adults?

by Jason Armstrong

16 years ago I’m jammed in a Penn State frat house with my buddies Pete, Jack and a few hundred other rambunctious Nittany Lions.

There’s cans of Natty Light and shots of Jagermeister and a cover band thrashing through a version of Blink 182’s “What’s My Age Again?” in the living room.

We’re young and thin and wild and drunk and clueless and unconcerned with mortality and consequences.

Suddenly, 16 years later, Pete, Jack and I are crammed, shoulder-to-shoulder Puerto Rican nightclub. La Factoria is a decaying factory that was converted into a labyrinth of bars, cocktail rooms and dance floors. The three of us, each a little softer around the waist, stand in a tight circle like we had done 16 years earlier. Our shirts are collared and tucked. Pete is bald. Jack is sporting streaks of gray. And I take the same medication as my 63 year old father.

La-Factoria-Bar-Old-San-JuanThe speakers thump Hispanic dance music. No lyrics. No chorus. Just a relentless thump thump thump that instigates an earthquake in my prostate. We shout about how loud and how crowded it is, how it’s hard to breathe and how young these “kids” look.

We look out of place. We look like we should be on a golf course. Or waiting in line for cornbread at the Golden Corral.

We acknowledge that La Factoria’s emergency doors are not properly marked and there’s exposed wiring snaking across the ceiling.  Above the thump, someone shouts, “What if there’s a fire?” We shake our heads. We stretch our legs. Someone yawns. Someone checks their watch. We calculate the hours of sleep we could get if somehow, in this very nook of time, by clicking our loafer heels we would be magically delivered and tucked into the embrace of our clean hotel bed sheets.

Over the course of the weekend Pete and I held a semi-serious conversation about making good decisions. A conversation that began when we had the intelligence to forego shots of some back alley Puerto Rican liquor distilled in a spackle bucket.

Pete and I have a long history of bad decisions and spackle bucket liquor that when we finally made a collectively good decision, we were so excited, so proud that we called our wives the next morning and told them all about it.

And yes, in the star-spangled eyes of the United States of America–we’re both adults.

I know (and certainly feel) that I’m not 20 years old anymore (just writing “Jagermeister” gives me chills) but it’s hard for me to believe I’m 36.

36.

It just sounds so mature and sophisticated and yet I find myself thinking, “Ok, so I’m 36, like when do I officially become an adult?”

I don’t know.

Maybe you become an adult when you truly understand that your choices have consequences.

Or maybe when you accept that your choices are your responsibility.

Or maybe when you attest that every choice you make is fixed with some weight of importance.

Or maybe when you finally have the maturity to realize that your choices are a reflection of who you are.

Or maybe, just maybe, even though our bellies swell, our eyesight diminishes and our bladders cop an attitude– no one actually ever grows up.

Be well,

Jay

What it’s like to write and “parent” at the same time

The Write on Fight on Essay Contest Winner-Siret Mann

The post So…when do we become adults? appeared first on WriteOnFightOn.

27 Oct 11:48

The science of photography

The Winterthur photo museum provides an unusual glimpse into the world of research with its exhibition "Cross Over". Objects and methods rarely seen by the public are on show, such as an image of a dog's heart. (Photo: swissinfo)
18 Sep 14:15

Edgertronic Kickstarter Project Makes Super Slow-Mo Video More Portable, Convenient And Affordable

by Darrell Etherington
edgertronic

Apple may have just introduced a very cool new Slo-Mo video feature with the iPhone 5s, but it only scratches the surface in terms of what’s possible with high-speed video. A new Kickstarter project wants to take extreme slow motion more mainstream, with a camera design called the ‘edgertronic’ that’s both compact and capable of capturing video at extremely high frame rates.

High-speed cameras currently available are both expensive and relatively bulky. They can cost upwards of $10,000, and are often the size of fairly large camcorders at best. But the edgertronic prototype will cost backers just under $5K, and the design is remarkably small – not too much bigger than a GoPro in fact.

The camera can capture footage at a maximum of 17,791fps, but at that incredible speed resolution will be limited to 192×96. HD (720p) resolution requires shooting at the slower, but still massively impressive 701fps. Compare that to the 120fps that the iPhone 5s shoots 720p video at, and you start to get a sense of just how slowed down the edgertronic’s video can get.

Edgertronic’s production-ready design features an Ethernet and 2 USB ports for connections, has an audio input port, and supports Nikon F-mount lenses. If you back it on Kickstarter, you can get an accessory pack that includes an Ethernet cable, power adapter, a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 D lens and more.

The SF-based team behind Edgertronic includes founder Mike Matter, who has worked on a number of consumer electronic and commercial/industrial grade electronics over the years, including the Apple Powerbook 540c. Joining him and his decades of experience are Juan Pineda, his co-founder and the software architect for the project, along with a team that includes industrial design, power management and Linux expertise.

Edgertronic is confident its camera is production-ready, and the proof is in the pudding, which in this case means those slow-motion videos you see above. The projected ship date for its initial group of devices is December, 2013, with a follow-up batch planned for delivery in April, 2014. $5K is still a lot of dough, but if you’re a sucker for super slow-mo, this could be the best game in town.