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Virtual Attention

I am scheduled to participate in a Zoom conference today of indeterminate length that has kept me from scheduling anything else at work.  It is important for others that I give my full attention to the proceedings.

Zoom has facilitated my having more meetings than I would otherwise have done because of COVID certainly but also because of travel cost, etc. The pandemic got us used to virtual meetings (mostly on Zoom for me) and our thought of what a meeting is has evolved.

It is worth noting how much information is cut off by not having meetings in a given room where posture and body language provide many clues as to what is going on that is unspoken. I have trouble identifying at the time who is not speaking (and hypothesizing why). 

I am not very facile with the chat feature and find it hard to have side-conversations going on; I've been this way in live meetings and have never been able to process having a note handed to me.

On the plus side I believe that I do speak much more effectively when I can see my face on a monitor. I make better "eye contact" with the camera and thus the group and I am comfortable modulating how reactive my face is for emphasis in a way that I am not in person.

I take voluminous notes during all meetings, not out of a love of detail but because I know from past experience that my mind will wander otherwise, and so I think most screenshots of me during meetings are of me looking down at my pad. Afterward I can use my notes to see who did not speak but it would be better if I noticed at the time.

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