The world is adjusting to “social distancing”. Conferences and gatherings have been cancelled. However, meetings and instruction and learning still need to happen. What should we do?

This post is to help talk through remote meetings, how to run them, and the tools that are available.

I have worked “From Home” for over 13 years now. Some of this is my experience, and some is solid advice gathered from other people’s experience.

Most phones and laptops nowadays have a forward-facing camera. Consider this helpful for people to see you, and you to see others.

Use these tools to have calls with others! Keep in touch, and show off what is going on around your home, or outside area. What did you buy? What’s new and interesting. Be human. It’s okay.

Also, if you want to have a remote meeting for a user group or other gathering, consider the following ideas strongly:

Best practices for remote meetings

1. Send out an agenda ahead of schedule. Ask for feedback. Incorporate the feedback and put estimated times for different items. Leave 10-15 minutes for question and answer.
2. Designate a moderator. That moderator needs to be clear about the meeting, and if a smaller meeting, should designate who does a “Roll call” aka who is on the meeting. The moderator should also check on chat.
3. Moderators should understand the need for muting people to reduce noise.
4. Attendees: Mute yourself unless you are given permission to talk. Even when typing.
5. Roll Call: Call out each person listed in the meeting. Ask if they want to introduce themselves as well.
6. Questions should be entered in the chat window. Some folks can answer on the fly by chat, or the presenter can pause and check on chat (with moderator’s help).
7. Attendees: Name yourself before talking. “Hi, George Walters here. I wanted to know…”
8. ONE  PERSON TALKS AT A TIME. Be patient, and mindful some are nervous about speaking on the phone. Let them finish. Ask if they are finished.
9. PLEASE ask questions. This helps with making the meeting feel more natural. We are humans, and want to talk, and also want to help give information. Ask any question.
10. Consider a round-robin approach where each person gets a few minutes for ideas or discussion. This equalizes the table between extroverts and introverts. Both are valid, and all voices need to be heard.
11. Organizers: Consider having a few people designated as official “Question people” to break the ice for the others who are a little less extroverted.
12. Dominating people will not be allowed to take over the meeting.
13. Schedule a follow up for deeper topics not on the agenda.
14. Thank everyone for their time. Also ask for follow up questions, and whether the meeting was recorded, and where to access it.
15. Be clear about follow ups post meeting. Who owns what item, and what time frame it should be done.
16. Leverage Email for follow ups, as a best practice for any meeting.

That’s the operational items I see help bring success to any meeting held online.

What tools can I use?

The tools available for videoconferencing are all over the map.

Here are the ones I think of as being great:

For individuals and small groups:

Skype! (Cross platform! Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS, xbox)

https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/

Teams is intended for organizations where an administrator and people of varying roles would use it. It can also be used for shared document storage, whiteboarding, and note-taking.

Teams! (Cross platform! Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS)

https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads

Zoom conferencing

https://zoom.us/

LogMeIn

https://www.logmein.com/products

Go to Meeting

https://www.gotomeeting.com/

Slack

https://slackhq.com/

Other choices were reviewed by pcmag

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-video-conferencing-software

This post was to help talk through remote meetings, how to run them, and the tools that are available.  Please let me know if you have other ideas or feedback. Thank you!