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Zoom.us (Replace Google Hangouts/Meet) ? #521

Closed nelsonic closed 5 years ago

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

Story ... 🤙 |> 😞 |> 💡

As a product owner, team member or stakeholder I want an excellent way of running/attending & recording remote team meetings with great quality So that I can communicate effectively with teammates and never lose any insight.

Additionally if/when I am unable to attend the meeting, I need a quick+easy way of catching up on the meeting by watching a video (double-speed!)

Context 💭

We have been using Google Meet (formerly "Hangouts") for the past 3 years to conduct all our remote meetings. It's been "OK" (_good but not great_) and @iteles captured our evaluation in #397 ...

Long story short: I (Nelson) am not "happy" with using Google Meet as I feel the product is an "MVP" that never got any "UX TLC", advanced or "pro" features. I feel that if we are going to be a "remote first" company/org we need to pay for a professional solution for our meetings.

I know that other people are "OK" with using G'Meet but we cannot afford to have an "OK" tool. Our tools need to be the best for each task that we perform. As a remote team we need the best communication tools so that we are never forced to compromise on our UX e.g: noisy/poor audio, delayed video (when presenting), squashed aspect ratio (when pair-programming), on-screen controls covering the text (when viewing a presentation), etc.

Not having a built-in way to record a product/client demo so that other stakeholders (or not-present team members) can play it back is a real handicap that we need to address.

We (@jruts, @samhstn, @Danwhy, etc.) used Zoom.us at TC and it was much better than G'Meet. I feel that we should "level up" our tool(s) and this is the one I have experience with so that's why I'm suggesting it. I'm very happy to hear alternative suggestions. (pls comment below!). Note: I/we am/are not interested anything "free" or "cheaper", I/we want something "professional" and "high quality" and don't mind paying for it because it's a "shovel" and we're digging for gold!

“Don't worry about the cost of a shovel when you’re digging for gold”.

Proposal 📝

I propose that we switch from using G'Meet to using https://Zoom.us/ because it is a single-product focussed company/app that does one thing really well.

image There is zero ambiguity on their home page as to what they do.

Product: A Dedicated Service/App for Meetings ✅

https://zoom.us/meetings image

Pricing: €13.99/Month 💸 (quite cheap really...)

https://zoom.us/pricing image

Pros ➕

Cons ➖

Short Term 📈

In the short term we are going to start recording our team meetings. In the same way that the IPFS team do. e.g: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRAdkNnAnuU

@alanshaw / @achingbrain / @olizilla can give us their insight into how effective it is for remote teams to record meetings. I believe they are using Zoom.us (please correct me otherwise gents)

This will allow people who are unable to attend a meeting (for whatever reason e.g: dentist/doctor) to replay the meeting and "catch up" with what was discussed/shared/decided/agreed at double speed!

It will also add a level of accountability to our meetings because "action items" will be recorded.

Note: we will need to have a rule that everyone follows: that we do not "pick on" anyone for not "following through" with their verbal commitments given in meetings. Meetings are not the place to make "promises". We will all be adopting written/published "OKRs" where people will commit to achieving a specific objective/goal. We will have a clearly structured process for defining collective/individual goals ("Objective"), tracking progress ("Key Results") towards achieving them and requesting/offering help when a goal/objective is proving more difficult/time-consuming than expected. see: https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/520

Longer Term 🎯

Our goal has always been to have a hypertransparent company/organisation. Longer term I expect us to allow the people using our App to attend our weekly team meeting where we discuss the priorities and become a truly "open company" see: https://www.opencompany.org/about/

Our Weekly Product (Time App) Demos are going to be recorded. We will link to the recording in the Weekly "release notes". Yes, 1-Week Sprints; we need to move fast!

Once we have some momentum with our product we will invite key stakeholders (e.g: "influencers" in the personal effectiveness community e.g: Thomas Frank, Cal Newport, Tim Ferris, etc.) to attend our Weekly Demo Meetings and we will present the feature that is most relevant to them with mini interview where we ask them for their "first thoughts & feedback". This content (video) will be re-packaged as the @dwyl weekly update podcast which the @dwyler community will watch to be informed of the latest features in our App and learn from the "super achievers". It's a Tim Ferris Podcast meets Personal Effectiveness super-user podcast. Not really for "mass market" but for our "super fans". https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-make-something-people-love-a8364771b7e6

Related to https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/397#issuecomment-336846920 where I noted that Google Meet doesn't have built-in "Record" feature. Also related to Gitter #517 which is a "free" tool that lacks features and has annoying bugs ... Note: Zoom.us will not "replace" Gitter and we will not be using Zoom.us "instant messaging" outside of meetings, we still need to finalise our evaluation of Gitter before selecting our "chat" tool. I am only mentioning it here as we need to "upgrade" all our "remote-co-working tools"! 🛠

Todo ✅

Please Discuss! 💬

Please add your thoughts/ideas/alternatives/concerns as comments below. We will be looking to switch away from Google Meet as soon as Monday 4th. So if you have strong feelings about this, please don't sit on the fence; speak up!

Thanks! ✨

SimonLab commented 5 years ago

Very happy to try zoom, my only question was if they provide a client for linux, but they do! image

https://zoom.us/download#client_4meeting

iteles commented 5 years ago

I have used Zoom once before, when I was having a call with some folks about a talk, in September 2017 so I'm out of date on how good it might be. At the time, as a first time user, it made me jump through a lot of hoops to be able to use it and I had to install software on my computer (which, as a person on the receiving end of an invite, especially for a one-off call as was the case, I hate). I will check if this is still the case but if so, we could always use Zoom for our internal meetings and then test it with external folks and go from there.

Very happy to test this out, the recording feature alone is likely worth its weight in gold if it works well 🚀

An *opt-out** newsletter as part of signing up 😕: image

Doesn't allow me to try anything without going back to my email address for the activation link: image

Sheesh, give me a second, I haven't even tried out the app yet, I can't go recommending it to other people! image

OK, looks like each person has a personal URL and it never changes. We're in! image

Looks like it opaquely downloaded and installed a small application when you click on 'Open zoom.us' (which as a dialogue gives you no indication that this will happen), very cheeky!

Let's try this out and evaluate 👍

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

@iteles thanks for diving in. Do you feel that we can test Zoom.us for our CS Retro call today?

iteles commented 5 years ago

Already updated the invite 20 mins ago 👍

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

@iteles cool. 🎉

Keyboard shortcuts: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205683899-Hot-Keys-and-Keyboard-Shortcuts-for-Zoom

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

Native app means we get pop-over faces and can still look at content full-screen. 😮 image

RobStallion commented 5 years ago

First impressions

I felt that zoom was pretty good. Other than the page not loading and having to get the app I felt it went pretty smoothly.

Pros

Cons

One link works but the other didn't (can't see why though 😕)

image this wouldn't work for me. It was taking me to this page... image



image This link did work but I didn't notice anything different between this one and the one above.

Danwhy commented 5 years ago

I was quite happy with our trial. It seemed to handle all six of us with our videos displayed with no problems, which is more that can be said for Google Meet.

Like Rob said, it was easy to connect. I like the desktop app as it means I don't have to go looking through my emails for the right hangout link.

The biggest problem I've had with Meet is that my microphone doesn't work half the time when I connect to a call. It's too early to say whether using Zoom will fix that or if it's purely a problem on my end, but so far so good.

SimonLab commented 5 years ago

Our first call was good and without any issues (sound or video). I like that the native app allow me to share all of my screens (couldn't do this with meet, and it was only working correctly with Chrome). The video thumbnail is great too while reading/watching another screen. So far so good

SimonLab commented 5 years ago

image

We might need to find a way to allow people to join a video call without the "host" when she's not available.

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

Can't join without @iteles ... 😕 image We need to pay for this service and all members of the "core" team should have host access.

Cleop commented 5 years ago

I feel like Zoom worked fine for our recent retrospective. I like the 'hand up' feature that @RobStallion came across. But like @iteles I was frustrated/confused by the initial set up journey and feel this could be confusing for clients.

iteles commented 5 years ago

Reporting back on recordings as I've been the only person to have access to these:

rub1e commented 5 years ago

Just FYI - it's now possible to record G'Meetings - https://support.google.com/meet/answer/7557124?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

(Yes, I know that doesn't solve any of the other issues!)

olizilla commented 5 years ago

It's the least worst solution I've used. It scales well (as long as everyone is polite), we use it for all-hands calls with around 80 (mostly muted) participants.

Recording calls has historically been pretty taxing on the host machine, but only in as much as you will notice your fans spinning.

Linux + tiling window managers have had problems with screen sharing in the past, but folks seem to have found configs that work now.

I mildly recommend it, but I also wouldn't use anything else right now.

O!

On Wed, 6 Feb 2019, 08:36 Ines Teles Correia <notifications@github.com wrote:

Reporting back on recordings as I've been the only person to have access to these:

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/521#issuecomment-460940972, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AADl97zdZkqpgdMVnElFz0d0dZHkGIp4ks5vKpP0gaJpZM4acoHP .

iteles commented 5 years ago

Update for now

We'll make this our go-to standup tool for now and adjust as needed.

I have upgraded up to the paid plan (no 40 minute cut-off) and will keep a close eye on which of the features we use.

We can also test this with some benevolent external people like the Club Soda team and unless we have major issues, use it for our increasingly fewer external calls 👍

Account upgraded: image image

What this doesn't resolve is the problem @SimonLab mentioned above https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/521#issuecomment-460181058 of requiring one host so we ultimately need to pay for more hosts - let's do this as needed.

This is also my acknowledgement of the fact that if we're going to spend upwards of £80 or £90 a month on this tool, we need a clear plan for where recordings are going to live, what they will be named how they will be used. image

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

@olizilla thanks for your feedback. ❤️ We really value your experience with this as you are running/attending meetings with lots of people and seeing acceptable results. "least worst" and "Mildly recommend" ... are ringing endorsements as far as I'm concerned. 😉

"least bad" is the first step toward "good". I agree that it's not "outstanding" by any means. But it's objectively better than Google Meet which as sacrificed call quality & scalability for UI simplicity.

@rub1e thanks for the link to the Google Meet recording feature. image It's good that it automatically saves the recording to Google Drive ... 🤔 But Still don't think they have addressed the quality issue(s) noted above. Having a recording of the meeting is good but if the sound is patchy, because the web-based codec isn't good, then it's of little use. 😞

@iteles the recording only showing the speaker must be a setting that can be changed. All the IPFS/IPLD calls show the "all participants" view. image https://youtu.be/R8wIN9GWwOs?t=99

Note-to-self: default to smiling in team meetings when I'm not talking ... 😊

@iteles given that there is no "security risk" in sharing the meeting host access with people in the "core" team, you can share your Zoom.us login with me or @SimonLab without "fear".

We definitely don't need to pay "£80 or £90 a month" for this tool. (we only need one host account) And again, if the tool adds the value by allowing us to be more effective with our work, then it's worth whatever we spend on it. If I can invest 100 to make 200 I will do it every time; it's like having a money printing machine! 💰 🌈

Cleop commented 5 years ago

image You see this error message when you enter a correct meeting ID but your host has not started the call yet. I feel like this is not a clear error message that could confuse a client and make them worry they're in the wrong place.

iteles commented 5 years ago

@Cleop Looks like it's not when the host isn't present but possibly because you can't just reuse a meeting ID, you have you schedule the meeting in Zoom first. Looking into it :+1:

SimonLab commented 5 years ago

It might be linked to https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/521#issuecomment-461437385 but this morning I couldn't start the meeting with the id we have been using so far (the one on the calendar notification). I'm not sure if I didn't set it up properly or if my zoom client didn't allow me to reuse the id of the previous meetings

iteles commented 5 years ago

@SimonLab Looks like you just can't reuse a meeting ID. I tried the meeting ID we used yesterday like you guys did and it didn't work for me either. Then just in case it was a glitch from me changing the email address on the account, I tried the ID from the meeting you hosted this morning with that account and it also didn't work.

Looks like: meeting IDs are one time usage unless you actually schedule a meeting within Zoom and then it knows that it can be reused. I'll do that and then the next thing to test is whether this new ID can only be used for the exact time scheduled or other times.

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

Guys we are getting carried away with making assumptions instead of actually asking the appropriate questions. Not only are meeting IDs re-usable we can define a human readable ID e.g: /dwyl. It's called a "Personal Meeting ID", please see: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362843-What-is-Personal-Meeting-ID-PMI-and-Personal-Link-

iteles commented 5 years ago

@nelsonic The human-readable URL (vanity URL) is reserved for the next level up of payment plan which requires a minimum of 10 hosts (i.e. £160 a month) 😉 On our plan though, we can define any numeric value for the personal ID.

More interestingly, as you were typing that, I was investigating and came across this little (at the time, unticked) box: image

So it looks like this single URL can be used 'on the fly', just not any old Zoom URL. Testing it for tomorrow!

Cleop commented 5 years ago

Yes this is the UI you see when the meeting hasn't started yet, as opposed to the invalid code error: image

This is more informative for clients.

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

clients > Product (we need this remote meeting tool to interact as a software product development team)

RobStallion commented 5 years ago

I did a screen share with zoom yesterday that lasted about 30minutes. It made my laptop VERY hot (🔥) and I noticed that things started to run slightly slower than normal.

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

@RobStallion interesting. thanks for reporting your experience. 👍

Have you ever tried to record your screen using QuickTime (Mac Native recording App) for that length of time? (if your laptop did not overheat I would be very surprised...) 🤔

When I use Google Hangouts/Meet with QuickTime to record it destroys the battery of my MacBook Air laptop in 20 mins (which usually lasts ~3h doing "normal" work) and overheats like an oven... 🍕

Interesting that you felt a noticeable slowdown on your MBPr"15 ... 💭 Were you using Atom and Chrome at the same time? Those tend to be process/RAM/power hungry too.

Generally speaking, when screen-capturing, unless you're recording a VR game dev session with lots of polygons to render, there isn't need for processor/GPU speed ...

It would be great if screen recording was not "taxing" on our machines, but sadly that's not the case. This is less a "fault" of Zoom and more a "fact of life" unless you want to dive into "fan management" ... https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/help-how-to-fix-your-overheating-media-making-mac--cms-27335

Either way, good to keep an eye on. @iteles has been using her (comparatively low-powered) MacBook "12 to record Zoom calls with many other apps/tabs open; it would be good to get her feedback too. 💬

RobStallion commented 5 years ago

Have you ever tried to record your screen using QuickTime (Mac Native recording App) for that length of time? (if your laptop did not overheat I would be very surprised...) 🤔

Once during FAC so I can't really say. I might check it out just to see what happens. I wasn't actually recording the screen though. I was just sharing (I don't know if this has the same effect but my guess would be it should be less taxing than sharing and recording).

Interesting that you felt a noticeable slowdown on your MBPr"15 ... 💭 Were you using Atom and Chrome at the same time? Those tend to be process/RAM/power hungry too.

Yes I was. I never had this happen when I was using hangouts but maybe that was to do with the fact that I used hangouts in chrome? One less 'hungry' thing running. (I just realised that I was also plugged into a 4k display which could also have been playing a role. Pushing more pixels is more taxing. That being said I have done that on hangouts so idk what it is 🤷‍♂️).

iteles commented 5 years ago

But typically I find video distracting. Often I’ll do a meeting where I have lots of people in case we need to get their input. But for most of the meeting I don’t need all of them to be paying attention (and I’m happy if they’re getting other work done). But if video is on, seeing people who are not paying attention just seems to viscerally kill the mood of almost any meeting.

From https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-productive-life-some-details-of-my-personal-infrastructure/

I think the biggest issue here is the line: "I’ll do a meeting where I have lots of people in case we need to get their input" which I disagree with as a strategy entirely and kills the premise of this paragraph.

But a good reminder that there are lots of different points of view on this!

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

I'm upgrading to the annual plan (£119.90/year or £9.99/month) because I want to have meetings (remote pairing mostly) that last longer than 40 mins and don't give me a count-down that is visible in the video (esp. if recording...) image

£9.99/month might seem like a "lot" of money to pay for something that is "free" in Google Hangouts/Meet or Skype, etc. but as stated above: this is a business tool that I expect to use every day. In the interest of not wasting time with researching other "free" tools with comparable features, I'm signing up to a year of Zoom.

If in the next 12 months anyone has a viable alternative suggestion, I'd be happy to consider it! (please leave suggestions as comments in this thread).

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

Closing issue for now. Got 12 months of Zoom. 🔍

nelsonic commented 4 years ago

Lame ... https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k7e599/zoom-ios-app-sends-data-to-facebook-even-if-you-dont-have-a-facebook-account via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22693792