11 of us in the Goal Clarity and Empowerment teams had a meeting via Skype for Business yesterday, so I asked Stuart, Caroline and Richard how they found the experience.  Here are our combined comments on some lessons learned.  What’s been your experience?  Feel free to add comments to this post.

What did you enjoy about the experience?

• Not having to leave my desk in order to attend the meeting – saves time
• Being able to participate by speaking and by messaging
• The messaging option for a. those who didn’t want to speak; b. comments that were slightly peripheral to the conversation; c. written summaries of the conversation
• Using the messaging trail (saved as a conversation) as a form of meeting minutes
• Being able to present one’s desktop to other participants – eg powerpoint slides
• The idea of getting 10 people together from different locations without having to think about the time spent with people travelling and the various time wasting that can happen with big meetings around that, I thought was great
• It was good to see the technology being used, which I feel could be used as almost a first choice option, to make it easier for people to attend no matter where they are or how busy their schedule is, as you often hear of people having to rush off from one campus to another back and forth to attend meetings
• Using the broadcasting function was great
• For the people who did turn on their cameras, in hindsight, it was good to see their faces

What didn’t you enjoy?

• I don’t have a camera on my PC. I felt left out as participants could see colleagues who did have cameras
• Not being able to see the faces of all the participants
• The messaging option because I had to break concentration on the conversation to read it
• It’s always nice to see people
• Related to my earlier comment, just hearing people’s voices actually when I thought about it, cuts off a large portion of communication signals.  As much as people don’t like it (probably me included) we should maybe encourage those that have cameras to use them so that we are getting all of the communication signals that we can get from face to face meetings.  It brings it closer to simulating a real meeting.  The only drawback can be that for those that are in very busy office areas, other people may end up being in the shot.  But maybe we need to do more of this so it is not considered abnormal and people become more used to it
• I agree in that having two forms of communication, i.e. written and spoken made it tricky to fit everything together. I would say usually one or the other is best, or that you should have some sort system around it if you are going to use written messages, so that things don’t get missed.

Any particular limitations or plus points?

• Colleagues in your workroom may hear you, unless you can find a separate space with a suitable PC or device
• Meeting participants may hear background noise in your workroom if you don’t have your mic muted
• Ability to participate remotely eg with a mobile device
• It’s important with this sort of meeting that there is a Chair – the format of the meeting doesn’t change the need for the conversation to be facilitated and for the agenda and schedule to be monitored
• Also, depending on the meeting, a minute/note taker might be needed.  Print-outs of the messages is great, but only catches a part of the conversation, and includes informalities that don’t need to be there
• What I found was that for me the written part of the conversation was saved in the Conversation History section in Outlook which is handy.  I assume others have that feature turned on? In other words the copying of the conversation may not have been necessary
• A limitation could be that some people do not have webcams
• Counter to what I was saying earlier it is healthy to get up and move around, so if all of your meetings where by Skype you might not have as much excuse to move from your desk, which is obviously not a good thing

If we were to do meetings via Skype for Business again, what would be the things we should take into account?

• Remind participants that they should look at the messages that people can send when in the meeting. (At least one person was not aware of this facility)
• Encourage people to use the messaging feature to add comments to the live conversation
• As mentioned, depending on the meeting, going in with an agenda, a Chair, and a note-taker
• Encourage those that have cameras to turn them on so we can see the non-verbal messages
• Have a chair/meeting organiser that makes sure things run smoothly with everyone given the opportunity to contribute, just like a face to face meeting, not that I think that was too much of a problem in this meeting
• Experiment with the technology to see what works