[NCUC E-team] today's hangout

[Tapani Tarvainen]

As people present probably realized, I don't function
very efficiently at tele- or videoconferences -- I much
prefer written communication, whether email, forums,
or chats (roughly in that order).

One way which in my experience makes teleconferences
much more efficient, at least for me, is to have
someone acting as a secretary and keeping minutes
real-time on some etherpad-type thing.
In practice that someone generally has to be
acting as chair as well, or at least chair and
secretary must know each other well, so it
does place a bit of a burden on the chair.

As a bit light-weight alternative, using
the chat feature for calling agenda and
summarizing what's been decided at each
point works fairly well, too.

But relying on spoken communication only,
especially when sound quality is bad and
video doesn't work, is very hard for me.
(I'm eagerly waiting for Wilson's summary
of what actually happened yesterday.)

It will get easier when we get to know each
other better and get more used to the features
of google hangout or whatever we use
(maybe I'll learn to mute when typing &c),
and it might be better if it was done in
a bit more formal fashion (people requesting
turns to speak by raising hands or something),
but I'd still like to suggest we try to see how well
chat (irc, skype chat, whatever) works for us.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen