November 16, 2018
Dear Everyone:
Summer is over. Last week,
when I returned home from “Jeannie’s” place, instead of turning on the
air conditioning, I turned on the heat.
Just for a little while, but there you are.
Granted, people around here still do their
Thanksgiving shopping
while wearing sleeveless shirts and sandals.
Nevertheless, the days are growing shorter, the nights are
growing longer; and both are getting downright chilly.
Summer is gone. For
now.
Where did I leave those slippers to heat up in the dryer?
In other news…
Last Friday, I attended an ARMA Chapter Meeting set up by the
Silicon
Valley Chapter. Silicon
Valley invited our Chapter to join them, something the current Board was
eager to do, since it required very little effort on their part.
Also, it was a chance to see how well a “Virtual Meeting” would
work.
The idea for a Virtual Meeting has been around for a while now.
In theory, the host chapter sets up a meeting via one of many
website organizations. The
attendees can connect by going to the website and logging in.
They can see the Presentation (usually
PowerPoint) on their
screen and hear the presenter through either the sound on their
computer, or by dialing into a conference phone number.
There are a few caveats.
(Caveat is a Latin word meaning, “Danger, Will Robinson!!!”)
First, everyone has to have access to the
Internet.
Not something you’d expect to have in a restaurant meeting room,
although that’s probably changing even as we speak.
Ditto a conferencing telephone with a speaker.
Again, these are becoming more and more popular and, therefore,
accessible.
So Silicon Valley found a Speaker who works for a company we’ll call
“Box Inc.”. (That’s actually
their real name. You can
look it up.) “Box” has a
couple buildings in
Redwood City.
I opted to drive down and across the
Bay to Redwood City, while
other members of the
Mount Diablo Chapter Board chose to connect
virtually. Our Treasurer,
“Kate” also came to Redwood City.
[Before continuing, I should point out that back when I was working for
a living, one of the things I used to do was give training on more than
one of several Company-used software systems having to do with Records
and Information Management (RIM).
These included
content management systems.
Sometimes the class would include some people who couldn’t attend in
person, but connected over the Company telecommunications system and
Intranet. Sometimes, I would
be the only person in the room, as all of the attendees were there
virtually. So I know a few
things about how to give a virtual presentation.]
Those of us who chose “real” over “virtual” were herded to a training
room with audiovisual equipment and an IT guy to handle the intricacies
of connection. The
Presentation was on “Cloud Content Management and Governance”, providing
and managing cloud content being what “Box” actually does for various
customers.
The Speaker, “Frosty”, really did know his stuff as far as cloud content
management was concerned.
I’d be willing to bet he’d never done a virtual presentation before.
For one thing, he had a microphone, to allow the people not in the room
to hear him. Except that he
only spoke into the microphone about 10% of the time.
He’s one of those people who like to talk with their hands.
Consequently, he was waving the mic around a lot, probably to the
annoyance of those trying to hear him.
He also had a tendency to point to the screen, and even pat a particular
bullet point, to emphasize something.
Needless to say, this was lost on the virtual attendees.
And, most importantly, no one gave the virtual attendees a “Heads Up” at
the beginning of the meeting.
Most of them had no idea how to Mute their connection, so anyone
who came by and stopped to talk was broadcast throughout the room.
This happened several time, including a lengthy discussion on a
wildfire currently happening in
Southern California.
And the IT guy had no idea how to Mute the connection from the
hosting software.
All the while, I kept biting my tongue and telling myself not to jump up
and try to “help”. Later our
Vice President, “Becky” told us that it was “very hard” to hear the
whole thing. But she liked
the pdf version of the Presentation that “Box” sent out later.
As I told “Kate” at the time, at least no one put us on Hold during
their call in to the meeting.
Back at work, that would have blasted us with music interspersed
with vocal commercials for one of the Company’s products.
And, as I warned all participants during the “ground rules”, it
would have resulted in my taking steps to “expel” the offending party as
quickly as possible.
It pays to know how to use the system ahead of time.
Love, as always,
Pete
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