Skip to main content

How not to waste time during online meetings... especially in corona times...


Virtual Communication

In online meetings our cognition is massively limited in comparison to a meeting in person. Communication in this context is challenging. A big part of the context and non-verbal communication is just not possible in the virtual environment; especially when we rely on audio only.

Turning the camera on not only gives the team members more context, it also enforces more focus on the meeting by avoiding side-works.

Be aware that the position of the camera on top of your screen will lead to the strange effect hat people are not looking in each others eyes. At least while talking, think about looking directly in the camera to gain a better focus and understanding of your listeners.



Agenda, Timeline and Roles

Like in any good meeting make sure to send an agenda and time planning upfront and invite only people that need to contribute to the meeting.

You should consider splitting group size depending on main purpose of the meeting:

  • Big Group: Informing
  • Small Group: Discuss
  • 1:1: Decision Making

Make sure to send a summary of the meeting to all stakeholders - also those that were not invited in the meeting but need to be informed.

The initiator of the meeting should be also the moderator and should assign the members roles like the record keeper and expert role at the begin of the meeting. 


General tips

With the lack of context, irony and humor are hard to understand and should be avoided.

In general online meetings are more exhausting than real-life meetings; this is why you might want to try to
Reserving some time at the end of the meeting to request a short resumee of all meeting members will also increase the common understanding of the meeting.



Tools



Golem.de

Comments

Most Favorite Posts

Working natively with JavaScript in iOS and Android without WebView

Using JavaScript code from native code without using a WebView (sic!) can be really useful to introduce dynamic functionality that was updatable without need of updating the app shorter iteration cycles share code between backend and native iOS and Android apps You can have business logic provided by a JavaScript that then controls the app that inject native functionality in the JavaScript context. You could even write an A/B testing framework based on this approach. iOS iOS offers the native JavaScriptCore: Evaluate JavaScript programs from within an app, and support JavaScript scripting of your app. So you can evaluate a script and read its return value natively: context.evaluateScript(myLib); let result = context.evaluateScript("myFunction();") let myFunction = context.objectForKeyedSubscription("myFunction"); let parametrizedResult = myFunction.invokeMethod(...) Or you can inject a native object into the JavaScript engine: @objc protoco...

Validity Time Auto-Renewables in Sandbox

The subscription durations, sandbox durations and incentive durations of auto-renewables. Hint: In Sandbox the validity time differs from live environment!!! Durations Sandbox Duration Incentive Durations (optional) 7 days 3 minutes 7 days 1 month 5 minutes 7 days, 1 month 2 months 10 minutes 7 days, 1 month 3 months 15 minutes 1 month 6 months 30 minutes 1 month, 2 months 1 year 1 hour 1 month, 2 months, 3 months After 6 extensions the abo is cancelled automatically in the sandbox environment.

How to access specific settings in the iOS settings app

Apple Settings App Open the preference / settings app. You can open the app at different pages Native application URL string example: prefs:root=General&path=Bluetooth Extended example: Tags: settings preferences Airplane mode: prefs:root=AIRPLANE_MODE Bluetooth: prefs:root=General&path=Bluetooth Brightness: prefs:root=Brightness Location services: prefs:root=LOCATION_SERVICES Location services (System services): prefs:root=LOCATION_SERVICES_Systemservices Hotspots: prefs:root=Hotspot WLAN: prefs:root=WIFI UMTS-Settings: prefs:root=General&path=Network Mobile data: prefs:root=General&path=USAGE/CELLULAR_USAGE VPN: prefs:root=General&path=Network/VPN Sound: prefs:root=Sounds Rigntone: prefs:root=Sounds&path=Ringtone Siri speech settings: prefs:root=General&path=Assistant handleopenurl.com

Crash Reporter

Plausible CrashReporter provides an in-process crash reporting framework for use on both the iPhone and Mac OS X. Crash reports are output as protobuf-encoded messages, and may be decoded using the CrashReporter library or any Google Protobuf decoder. The CrashReporter library handles both uncaught exceptions and fatal signals. Features: Implemented as a in-process fully async-safe signal handler. Does not interfere with debugging in gdb Handles both uncaught Objective-C exceptions and fatal signals (SIGSEGV, SIGBUS, etc) Backtraces for all active threads are provided. Provides full register state for the crashed thread. The following platforms are currently supported: Mac OS X 10.5+ (x86-32, ppc, experimental x86-64) iPhone OS 2.0+: (armv6, armv7) iPhone Simulator 2.0+ (x86-32) PLCrashReporter Server part and extension: CrashReporterDemo MacDevCrashReporter See also: CrashKit Hoptoad Hexspeak

How to link to TestFlight App in iOS

There are two things you need to do. First, check to see if TestFlight is installed. Then create a new link to your app. NSURL *customAppURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"itms-beta://"]; if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:customAppURL]) {     // TestFlight is installed     // Special link that includes the app's Apple ID     customAppURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://beta.itunes.apple.com/v1/app/978489855"];      [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:customAppURL]; } This special https://beta.itunes.apple.com URL will be opened directly in TestFlight. Finally, if you are using iOS 9 (or later), you need to make an addition to your Info.plist to get the canOpenURL: method to work. If your app is linked on or after iOS 9.0, you must declare the URL schemes you want to pass to this method. Do this by using the LSApplicationQueriesSchemes array in your Xcode project’s Info.plist file. For each URL scheme you wan...

Great Teams Are About Personalities, Not Just Skills

The scientific evidence indicates quite clearly that individuals’ personalities play a significant role in determining team performance. In particular, personality affects: What role you have within the team How you interact with the rest of the team Whether your values (core beliefs) align with the team’s In our own work we found that psychological team roles are largely a product of people’s personalities. For example, consider team members who are: Results-oriented. Team members who naturally organize work and take charge tend to be socially self-confident, competitive, and energetic. Relationship-focused. Team members who naturally focus on relationships, are attuned to others' feelings, and are good at building cohesion tend to be warm, diplomatic, and approachable. Process and rule followers. Team members who pay attention to details, processes, and rules tend to be reliable, organized, and conscientious. Innovative and disruptive thinkers. Team members who n...

Tips for working with Firebase Remote Config

Caching As long as we're talking about loading strategies, let me hit on a related topic; caching. It sometimes confuses developers that values from remote config are cached for 12 hours instead of being grabbed immediately every time you call fetch(). And while you can reduce this cache time somewhat, if you start making network calls too frequently, your app might start getting throttled, either by the client, or the Remote Config service. Obviously, while you're developing and testing your Remote Config implementation, this can be inconvenient, which is why you can override the local throttling behavior by turning on developer mode . Force Update of Remote Config With Firebase Cloud Messaging, you can send a data-only notification to all of your devices, letting them know that there's an urgent update pending. Your apps can respond to this incoming notification by storing some kind of flag locally. The next time your user starts up your app, it can look for thi...