For the past three days I’ve had a work meeting starting at 6 a.m. Two of
the three meetings have been video conferences, meaning that the meeting
setup starts 15 minutes earlier.

Unfortunately, video conferencing is still too primative and always adds
significant technical issues to the meeting. Getting everything set up and
working correctly for the video conferences has caused both of these
meetings to start about 15 minutes late — meaning that it took a half hour
to get video conferencing set up and working. The result is a meeting that
finally starts with the meeting technology being the initial subject rather
than the real purpose of the meeting.

My view is that video adds no appreciable value to the meeting but rather
detracts significantly from the meeting. Our European conference rooms are
set up so the camera zooms in on the person speaking. During a lively
discussion the camera jumps all over the place and never gets focused. The
result is a very blurry and pixelated picture. Further, the sound volume
coming from the speaker when some other location is talking causes the
camera in Europe to focus on the wall!

Our technology today is only marginally useful for these meetings. At least
half the time when someone starts talking, they will stop and ask, “Can you
hear me?”. This is because the camera response is too slow and that the
fine facial detail does not pick up on the camera. Meetings just go better
without video conferencing. It’s just not worth getting up at 4:30 a.m. to
to hassle with a video conference!

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