Challenges of the first online all-hands meeting

[ishanijerin1]

The quality of the webcam was so poor that it was difficult to capture the presentation.


With the number of connected devices, including projectors, increasing, when remote participants are asked to switch microphones, the speakers of the unintended devices react, causing feedback and noise.

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Due to the roughness of the video feed and the benefit of using our student database the imbalance of the light sources in the office, the documents were shining and overexposed, making it difficult to understand which page of the document was being discussed.

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If the PC shakes due to a slight vibration, the image becomes blurry and difficult to see.

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As this was the last monthly regular report meeting of the 12th term, the agenda was packed with events, and the organizers were busy with hosting, timekeeping, chat support, photography, and more.

It was so hectic that we switched to screen sharing midway through the meeting, and the video distribution stabilized a little, but I was in a mild panic due to the rough image quality that I hadn't noticed during testing, and the unexpected feedback. The employees around me adjusted the equipment to eliminate the feedback, wrote the page numbers of the documents that were blown out, and provided a lot of support, and we were able to continue the meeting somehow.

Learning from this reflection, the next thing we tried was to move our morning assembly, which is usually held every Monday in our office and lasts for about five to ten minutes, online.



Morning assembly talk
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Due to the roughness and difficulty of viewing the web image quality, we removed the webcam and made the main screen a screen sharing of the materials. Initially, we wanted to show the presenter's appearance clearly, so we displayed it on the main screen, but we changed it to a thumbnail view on the right side of the screen. (As a result, we ended up not using a projector, which also helped prevent feedback.)