Remote meetings: Keeping us connected—kind of

Word processors! Digital calendars! An “electronic mail system whereby messages are sent and received by computer”! A 1982 New York Times article on [the “office of the future”]( covered all these exciting possibilities, plus one more: the remote meeting. “Teleconferencing,” as it was described, would allow people in far-flung locations to see and speak to one another. Even in its nascent state, the prospect was met with some ambivalence. “So far, teleconferencing has been used mainly as a substitute for routine weekly meetings among people who have already met face to face,” the article read. “But according to Robert Johansen, a senior research fellow at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif., ‘the main market for teleconferencing is for meetings that don’t occur now among people who are geographically separated. It creates new communications opportunities.’” After a surprisingly long wait, that future is here. Remote meeting software has fostered professional collaborations that could never have existed in a previous era, and allowed partnerships around the globe to thrive. But they are also glitchy, time-consuming, and frequently infuriating. Let’s dial in. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Sponsored by [Quartz Obsession] Remote meetings June 26, 2019 Teleconference room, five minutes --------------------------------------------------------------- Word processors! Digital calendars! An “electronic mail system whereby messages are sent and received by computer”! A 1982 New York Times article on [the “office of the future”]( covered all these exciting possibilities, plus one more: the remote meeting. “Teleconferencing,” as it was described, would allow people in far-flung locations to see and speak to one another. Even in its nascent state, the prospect was met with some ambivalence. “So far, teleconferencing has been used mainly as a substitute for routine weekly meetings among people who have already met face to face,” the article read. “But according to Robert Johansen, a senior research fellow at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif., ‘the main market for teleconferencing is for meetings that don’t occur now among people who are geographically separated. It creates new communications opportunities.’” After a surprisingly long wait, that future is here. Remote meeting software has fostered professional collaborations that could never have existed in a previous era, and allowed partnerships around the globe to thrive. But they are also glitchy, time-consuming, and frequently infuriating. Let’s dial in. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Have you tried the Quartz app yet? --------------------------------------------------------------- 👉Keep up with news for you, curated by Quartz editors 👉Engage with an informed community of leaders, subject-matter experts, and curious minds 👉Personalize your feed with the topics you love [Get the app for free]( Brief history [1878:]( George du Maurier publishes a cartoon in Punch magazine of the “telephonoscope,” a fictional invention from Thomas Edison that transmits images along with sound. [1964:]( Bell Labs debuts the Picturephone, which requires that both parties make advance reservations, travel to one of the nation’s few designated Picturephone booths, and remain motionless for the duration of the call. [1993:]( The first “webcam” makes its public debut; it’s used to monitor a coffee pot at the University of Cambridge. [1994:]( The QuickCam is the first consumer webcam; it costs $100 ($175 today). [1995:]( The first public videoconference between North America and Africa takes place at an event called the Cybersafari Digital Be-In and Internet Love-Fest, connecting a San Francisco tech conference and a Cape Town “tech rave” for a one-hour video chat. [1996:]( College student Jennifer Ringley debuts Jennicam and becomes the first livestream internet star. [2006:]( Skype (short for “sky peer to peer”) adds videoconferencing. [2010:]( FaceTime emerges from an Apple gaming social network. [2013:]( British adventurer Daniel Hughes speaks to the BBC via Skype from the top of Mount Everest. Sponsored by AT&T Business Is a lagging network slowing down your business? --------------------------------------------------------------- An outdated infrastructure can paralyze technology—and your company’s growth. Here are the signs to watch and the solutions to deploy when your midsize business hits the point of change and is ready to expand.[Discover how to update your network]( Giphy Origin story Waiting for the meeting to start --------------------------------------------------------------- In 1936 [the first videoconference]( was transmitted at a robust 25 frames per second—better than the first consumer webcam 60 years later—between Berlin and Leipzig, with the quality of “a small size projection of a substandard cinema film.” It cost about a week’s wages for a three-minute call. Over the next four years Hamburg and Munich were added to the system, as well. Each outpost handled about 20 calls a day, but World War II shut it down. Progress then ground to a halt. In the year 2000, when the future was supposed to have long since arrived, a historian [told The New York Times]( that videoconferencing had been “on the verge of happening for nearly a hundred years.” AT&T started work on video phones in the 1930s, but didn’t try to go into homes and businesses until 1970 with a device that was, the company’s historian told the Times, “the most famous failure in the history of the Bell system.” Execs told AT&T they’d embrace the Picturephone [at $50 a month]( ($340 in 2019 dollars). It rolled out at $70 a month in Chicago ($475 today) and $160 in Pittsburgh (over $1,000), plus overages after half an hour. It was a dud, despite a forward-thinking feature that allowed users to [look at documents in a company database](. AT&T tried again in 1992 with the [Videophone 2500]( but it cost $1,600 to see your loved ones on a 3.3-inch screen. They weren’t alone: MCI made a [$750 video phone]( that made callers look “as if they are slowly moving underwater.” AT&T [concluded in 2001]( that the Picturephone was “too big, too expensive, and uncomfortably intrusive,” and also that “people did not want to be seen on the telephone.” Eventually, tiny and cheap cameras would become ubiquitous, which in turn would make them seem less intrusive, aiding their widespread adoption as a business tool. Quotable It turned out that there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn’t been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces…. Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. —[David Foster Wallace,]( Jest]( Reuters/Marcos Brindicci By the digits [$16:]( Cost of a three-minute call on Bell Labs’ 1964 Picturephone [$500 million:]( Amount Bell spent, over nearly two decades, developing the Picturephone [28.8k:]( Modem speed required for CU-SeeMe, the first internet videoconference software, created in 1993 [$4,000:]( Cost of a British Telecom Presence videophone in 1996 [$49:]( Monthly cost of an annual premium subscription to Cisco’s WebEx videoconferencing software [70%:]( Share of the global workforce that works from home at least once a week [$2,000:]( Estimated annual savings in company real estate costs for remote employees in the US [31,263,522:]( Number of times the YouTube video of a professor’s children interrupting his live remote interview with the BBC had been watched as of June 19, 2019 Have a friend who would enjoy our Obsession with Remote meetings? [ [Forward link to a friend](mailto:?subject=Thought you'd enjoy.&body=Read this Quartz Obsession email – to the email – Reuters/Kacper Pempel Pop quiz Which of the following is not the name of remote meeting software currently on the market? BigBlueButtonBlueJeansBigMarkerJayBird Correct. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Million-dollar question Bob? Bob, did we lose you? --------------------------------------------------------------- Video calling technology has been commercially available for decades. So why is it still so bad? As Sarah Kessler [explains in Quartz At Work]( the technologies that enable remote meetings came together piecemeal. Companies that invested in expensive teleconference equipment were more likely to upgrade their existing software, even if clunky, than switch to a leaner all-in-one system. And unlike phones, which communicate without regard to manufacturer or carrier, many of these systems refuse to talk to anyone but themselves. Hence the need for PINs, alternative dial-in phone numbers, and other old-school backups to what should be a seamlessly modern call. “Here we collide with one example of the legacy problem: As annoying as PIN numbers may be, the system is hard to change, not so much because of technology but because of people,” Kessler writes. Watch this! Even if you’re in a meeting right now, stop what you’re doing to watch the sketch “A Conference Call in Real Life.” In four minutes, the comedy duo Tripp and Tyler recreate every conference call you’ve ever been on: the overtalking, the awkwardness, the guy who can’t get his PIN to work, the inevitable dog in the background. Giphy Pro tips Some ground rules --------------------------------------------------------------- Faulty technology ruins remote meetings. So do badly-behaving humans: overtalking, failing to mute, and blatantly rude multi-tasking are all toxic, and all-too-common. Quartz reporter Katherine Foley, who is based in Washington, DC and calls in frequently to meetings with colleagues around the globe, has a simple rule. “I honestly think that remote meeting etiquette is merely heightened regular meeting etiquette,” she said. “Have meeting notes; make sure to send those to attendees 24 hours in advance; have a good internet connection… and then be on time.” [Slack’s etiquette guide]( has similar advice, including how to build virtual camaraderie. Looking your best requires a bit more forethought for remote workers. Here are [tips from a Skype executive]( on how to look decent online: keep the camera at eye level, have multiple indirect light sources, and look at the camera—not at the recording of your own face. Future tense The next frontier in remote meetings --------------------------------------------------------------- If you think your teleconferencing set-up is primitive, try quarterly earnings calls, which are “[designed to be unmemorable]( with disembodied speakerphone voices, low-quality audio ringing over slideshows, or maybe a YouTube stream. Zoom used its own videoconferencing software for its first earnings call as a public company—and, as Michelle Cheng writes for Quartz, [showed us what the future could look like](. Giphy Poll How often do you call into remote meetings? [Click here to vote]( More often than I can count—and secretly, I love themOnly when I have toNever! It’s IRL or nothing for me 💬let's talk! In yesterday’s poll about cash deserts 46% of you said you still use cash, but not as much as you used to; 29% of you always carry it and appreciate the privacy that comes with cash transactions; 18% of you have gone completely digital; and 7% claim to be cryptocurrency purists. 📧 Based on the numbers in yesterday’s Obsession, Steve calculates that credit card companies are raking in $425 billion in fees each year. “Can we have a conversation about that and why these fees haven’t come down as volume continues to go up?” he asks. Peter reports from the post-cash world, saying, “I was just in Stockholm for a week and I never once touched a Swedish Kronor. I was amazed as a tourist how simple this made traveling and transacting with local businesses.” 🤔 [What did you think of today’s email?](mailto:obsession%2Bfeedback@qz.com?cc=&subject=Thoughts%20about%20remote%20meetings&body=) 💡 [What should we obsess over next?](mailto:obsession%2Bideas@qz.com?cc=&subject=Obsess%20over%20this%20next.&body=) [🎲 Show me a random Obsession]( Today’s email was written by [Corinne Purtill]( edited by [Whet Moser]( and produced by [Luiz Romero](. The correct answer to the quiz is JayBird. Enjoying the Quartz Obsession? [Send this link]( to a friend! Want to advertise in the Quartz Obsession? Send us an email at ads@qz.com. Not enjoying it? No worries. [Click here]( to unsubscribe. Quartz | 675 Avenue of the Americas, 4th Fl | New York, NY 10011 | United States [Share this email](