Suddenly Virtual

CHAPTER 4New Best Practices for Meetings as a Result of COVID‐19: The Meeting Scientist Perspective

In a recent open‐ended survey of working adults in the United States, Joe asked, “If you were working from home due to COVID‐19, think of the last virtual meeting you had and list all the challenges (if any) that emerged due to conducting the meeting online.” Take a look at the answers from a random sampling of ten people participating in the survey.

• Respondent #1: “Connection errors.”
• Respondent #2: “Connection issues.”
• Respondent #3: “Getting connected to the conference line.”
• Respondent #4: “Getting connected was a challenge.”
• Respondent #5: “Network was bad for some participants.”
• Respondent #6: “Bad network.”
• Respondent #7: “Server issue.”
• Respondent #8: “Wi‐Fi problems.”
• Respondent #9: “My Wi‐fi cutting out so my colleagues could not hear me!”
• Respondent #10: “Lag, the spinning circle of death, kill me now!”

Do any of these complaints sound familiar? Joe's research identified what more than 35% of folks found challenging – getting connected and dealing with Internet‐related connectivity issues. Even under the best of circumstances, it is not uncommon for one or more participants to struggle with getting connected. Sometimes this is a result of their Internet service issues, while other times it's due to Mother Nature, uncontrollable issues such as windstorms, fires, hurricanes, and so on. If anything, 2020 taught us that anything is possible in terms of challenges to ...