Greetings!
Today we continue our examination of meeting technology by discussing the unique needs of hybrid meetings, both large and small. Hybrid meetings have a mix of offsite and onsite attendees, and they bring their own special challenges to collaboration and engagement.
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Meeting organizers, this week is all about you. The success of a hybrid meeting is almost entirely determined by the organizer, more than in other meetings. Meeting attendees, we hope you stick around for the ride, as the more everyone understands the challenges of hybrid meetings, the better they will be.
Best practice is to never have hybrid meetings, as they often equate to an on-site meeting with off-site people listening in. Also, the biggest audio and communication issues are reported in these types of meetings. Whenever possible, meetings should either be all face-to-face or completely virtual. Given the space issues in the Minneapolis office building and the ambient noise that can be present around the cubes, it may be impossible to always avoid hybrid meetings. However, choosing a hybrid meeting means committing to making the experience work for everyone, which requires careful preparation and may mean repeating questions, troubleshooting audio, and not proceeding with the meeting until everyone can hear/participate.
Let’s look at some of the special concerns of hybrid meetings and talk about best practices.
Number of attendees:
The number of attendees in a hybrid meeting impacts the meeting’s effectiveness. It is almost impossible to have an effective hybrid meeting with more than 10 people; it requires audio/visual equipment and expertise we just don’t have. While the best practice is to not hold hybrid meetings, here are some attendee guidelines if you must have them:
- 3-5 attendees: hybrid meetings can be done effectively with some planning
- 6-10 attendees: hybrid meetings are strongly discouraged, but you can get away with it
- more than 10 attendees: no hybrid meetings. Consider that a standard from Sue.
Decide if a hybrid meeting is appropriate.
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Meeting space:
The meeting space has an impact on the meeting’s success, especially when it comes to sound.
Sound recommendations for onsite attendees:
- Use the USB speakerphones from the Media Room. Don’t use office or conference room speakerphones; they are horrible.
- Speak clearly, enunciate, and face the speakerphone when you talk. Room acoustics, tone of voice, and the direction you are facing all impact how clearly sound is transmitted over the speakerphone.
- Avoid random noises. It is amazing how distracting tapping the table, clicking a pen, and other noises are when amplified and fed into someone’s ear. Try to sit quietly if at all possible.
- Avoid large conference rooms. If your onsite attendees can’t fit into an office or a small conference room, you really shouldn’t hold a hybrid meeting. The acoustics in the large MN conference rooms are not good and it is hard to mic them effectively with our available equipment.
Learn more about the impact of space on sound.
Because Skype shows only 5 webcams by default, there is no good way to have webcams in a hybrid meeting with more than 5 people. There are two recommendations, depending on the number of total meeting attendees.
- 3-5 total meeting attendees: Each onsite attendee should bring their own laptop, log into the meeting space, and use their webcam.
- 6-10 total meeting attendees: Set up one webcam for the entire onsite attendee group, preferably using the conference webcam/speakerphone available in the Media Room. Make sure all onsite attendees are clearly visible on the webcam and make eye contact with it when talking.
Attendee engagement:
Hybrid meetings have unique challenges for two areas of engagement—engagement with the meeting material and between attendees. Luckily, there is one solution to both of these issues. All onsite attendees need to bring their laptop to the meeting space. Here’s why.
- Each attendee can control what they see. When everyone has a laptop they can decide if they want to view just the material, the material and the speaker, or just the speaker. And they can adjust the size of each item to their preference.
- Attendees can engage with each other in chat. If the onsite attendees don’t have laptops, they can’t interact with the offsite attendees in chat. Chat can be a powerful communication and collaboration channel and providing all attendees equal access to it makes for a more successful meeting.
Learn more about maximizing attendee engagement in hybrid meetings.
Walden and Walden University Meetings:
As we are talking about hybrid meetings this week, we want to take a moment to talk about Walden Brown Bags and Town Hall meetings, and Walden University Town Hall meetings. The Making Meetings Matter best practices and standards apply to CSS meetings only; they have not been adopted by Walden. There is a lot of interest around the university about what we are doing, and there are discussions about how to make the Walden and Walden University meetings better. It is much harder to affect change in the larger organization than it in our Center and, after all, it has taken us months to get where we are in CSS. Please know that the people actually running the Walden and Walden University meetings are doing the best they can and usually had no input into how the meeting was set up. Also, the large conference spaces are challenging to set up appropriately as we don’t control them (they are rented space from our building). Sue and your directors are doing everything they can to advocate for all the offsite staff at Walden. We ask that you continue to have patience with the people managing the meeting rooms, and that you continue to let Sue and the meeting organizers know about the challenges you face in large hybrid meetings. And we will do the same.
What do you think about hybrid meetings? Love them or hate them, let us know in Yammer!
Next week we will discuss best practices in sharing meeting materials.
But before you go… You asked for a distinction between meeting standards and meeting best practices. We took your question to Sue, and she gave us some standards. Each department has the right to establish their own standards in addition to these. We will add to this list each week as new standards are discussed.
CSS Meeting Standards:
- Meetings must be held in Skype unless there is a business reason to hold them in another platform (such as meeting with an external team who doesn’t know how to use Skype) or all attendees are onsite.
- Meeting invitations must include:
- An agenda (at least a description when it goes out and a full agenda before the meeting)
- Information on expectations for audio and webcam use
- No hybrid meetings with more than 10 attendees
Thanks for reading, and let us know what you think in Yammer!
Anne, Lisa, Amber, and Erin
Remote Experience Working Group
Number of attendees
How many attendees is too many?
If there are more than 10 attendees in a meeting, make it virtual (unless they are all onsite, of course). And really, if there are more than 5 it should be virtual unless there is a strong business reason to make it hybrid.
It really doesn't matter what the balance is between the number of onsite and offsite attendees when considering how to hold the meeting. If there is one or two offsite attendees and five or six onsite attendees, it may be tempting to say "let's just make it a hybrid meeting; there are only a few offsite people". However, there seems to be an inverse relationship to the number of offsite attendees and the offsite meeting experience. The fewer offsite attendees, the worse the meeting experience is for them. The fewer offsite attendees, the harder it is to get a word in edgewise and to hear over the conversation in the room. In these meetings, the message often heard by the offsite attendees is "we are giving you a token invitation but we really aren't interested in what you have to say". No one wants to convey that message, but it can be hard to ignore the subtext.
Meeting space: sound
The meeting space really comes into play in hybrid meetings. Those in the room may not realize it, but the room's acoustics have a huge impact on the quality of the audio for offsite attendees. Slight echoes are amplified by the (frankly horrible) speakerphones in the conference rooms, resulting in a bad experience for offsite attendees.
Speakerphones:
If you must have a hybrid meeting, use one of the USB speakerphones available in the Media Room instead of the office or conference room speakerphone. The USB speakerphones provide a better sound quality (both microphone and speaker) than the conference room phones and you don't have to mess with a call-in number in your Skype meeting.
Contact lisa.raymond@mail.waldenu.edu for assistance with the USB speakerphones.
Mute and onsite noise:
Skype mutes all attendees as they come into the meeting space, so there is no need to mute the audience.
If an offsite attendee's mic is picking up distracting sounds, someone should IM them privately and ask them to mute. Alternatively a presenter can mute them (and them tell them they've been muted). It's a good idea to designate someone to preform this role before the meeting.
Remember there is no way to mute the onsite attendees. The sound in the room is perhaps more distracting for offsite attendees than the occasional offsite sound is for the onsite attendees. Onsite attendees need to be cognizant of the amount of noise they are making, and the presenter needs to keep the noise in mind and pause for laughter or groans to quiet before continuing.
Meeting space: webcams
Webcams are one area where the number of attendees really comes into play. Skype only shows five active webcams. This means if there are more than 5 attendees in a meeting, Skype may only display someone's webcam when they are speaking. However, in a hybrid meeting where the onsite attendees are all using a USB speakerphone, the only webcam displayed is the one attached to that laptop, as Skype doesn't think anyone else in the room is talking.
If there are more than 5 attendees in a hybrid meeting, the only way to resolve the Skype webcam issue is to set up one webcam and point it at everyone in the onsite space. If that webcam is connected to the same laptop as the USB speakerphone, then that webcam will always be displayed in the meeting.
There are issues with this setup. It is almost impossible to get everyone in the meeting room on one webcam. People are sitting on either side of the table, you may get the back or side of someone's head, and as people move and fidget during the meeting they will move in and out of the shot. The purpose of the webcam is to see the person speaking and get the visual cues provided by facial expressions and body language to enhance communication. If the only thing an offsite attendees can see is someone's ear, that isn't very useful.
If you must have a hybrid meeting with more than 5 attendees, use one webcam for the room. Have everyone in the room sit close together, address the webcam when they talk, and try not to move in and out of the shot. Best practice—don't have hybrid meetings with more than five attendees!
Attendee engagement
Hybrid meetings impact attendee engagement in some unique ways. How much you need to consider these different areas depends on the purpose of the meeting.
The best way to promote attendee engagement in hybrid meetings is for everyone to bring their laptops, log into the meeting space, and turn on their webcams.
Note: Make sure all onsite attendees mute their speakers and mics to avoid feedback and echoes!
Engagement with material:
You need to decide how people in hybrid meetings will engage with the material. This is usually done by projecting the content. If you are projecting content, you need to run the projector from a laptop that is dedicated to sharing the meeting content. None of the attendees need to see someone manage the backend of the meeting space. This may mean you need one person to share the content and project and a different person to monitor chat, mute people as needed, and other meeting backend tasks.
Engagement with other attendees:
If you want your attendees to engage with each other, you need to think about how that will work. Depending on your departmental culture, chat may be an important part of attendee engagement. If the onsite attendees can't engage in chat they may be missing out on important conversations or opportunities for collaboration.
Engagement with speakers:
If everyone in the meeting is logged into Skype on their own laptop, Skype identifies the speaker through the blue line under the persons picture and by bringing their picture to the top if it wasn't there already. If attendees aren't logged in to the meeting, Skype can't identify the speaker.
If there are attendees who aren't in the Skype meeting room, the speaker needs to identify the name of speakers, and possibly their titles (depending on the audience). Don't assume that the attendees know voices. Even among groups that have worked together for a long time it can be challenging to identify someone's voice.
Decide if a hybrid meeting is appropriate
Should I hold a hybrid meeting?
There are two questions you can ask to determine if your hybrid meeting will be successful.
- Can all the onsite attendees fit in one office or small conference room?
- Can all the onsite attendees bring their laptop, get on wireless, and have a functioning Internet connection?
If the answer to either of these questions is no, you will not have a successful hybrid meeting, when defining success as having all attendees be able to engage equally with the speaker, the material, and each other.
Let's make this easy. If there are more than 10 attendees in the meeting, don't make it a hybrid meeting. It must be virtual. Consider this a standard set by Sue.