Why the first 5 minutes of every video conference is, 'Can you hear me?'
The video conference is one of the least-liked parts of modern office culture.
Despite the plethora of video conferencing services -- Google Hangouts, BlueJeans, Highfive, Skype, FaceTime, and dozens more -- the first five minutes of every meeting tends to be a series of fruitless attempts to get everyone's audio working correctly. And even when it does, dropped connections, poorly timed muting/unmuting, and quiet talkers often ruin the flow.
The truth is video conferencing is hard. Layering random internet services on top of ad hoc equipment on top of users with virtually no training means you get a grab-bag of results. Sure there are sleek corporate systems, but their cost often puts them out of range of most startups.
Will things get better for video conferencing? Or will Gen Z need to get used to the facepalm-setups millennials (and others) have endured for years? On this week's MashTalk, Mary McDowell, the CEO Polycom, whose iconic UFO-shaped speakerphones populate conference rooms worldwide, joins the podcast to talk about the real reason your office is so bad at video conferencing, the future of meetings, and whether telepresence robots are a thing.
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Pete Pachal was Mashable’s Tech Editor and had been at the company from 2011 to 2019. He covered the technology industry, from self-driving cars to self-destructing smartphones.Pete has covered consumer technology in print and online for more than a decade. Originally from Edmonton, Canada, Pete first uploaded himself into technology journalism at Sound & Vision magazine in 1999. Pete also served as Technology Editor at Syfy, creating the channel's technology site, DVICE (now Blastr), out of some rusty HTML code and a decompiled coat hanger. He then moved on to PCMag, where he served as the site's News Director.Pete has been featured on Fox News, the Today Show, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC and CBC.Pete holds degrees in journalism from the University of King's College in Halifax and engineering from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. His favorite Doctor Who monsters are the Cybermen.
