Successful Zoom meetings with mixed audience?

[bae]

There's a governmental hearing I need to attend today. It is being held the next island over.

Normally to participate, I'd have to have gotten on the 7AM ferry, been on the boat for an hour, then walk 15 minutes up to the county offices. Then at 1PM I'd participate for 15-20 mins, assuming the hearing was on schedule. If it was, I might have been able to catch the 2:20PM boat back here, and would conveniently arrive home around 4PM or so.

If the interisland ferries were running properly, which they haven't been for months. People have been stranded on the wrong islands overnight as sailings get cancelled or boats break or crews don't show up.

Today, however, I am Zooming in for my 15-20 mins, which is a huge convenience.

This will work reasonably well because the format of the hearing is "one person talks at a time" and there is formal order maintained.

I don't think the County will ever go back to pure in-person meetings and hearings - teleconferencing makes it so so much easier for our citizens who live on the other islands here to participate.

[iris lilies]

The meeting is over, the hybrid meeting, and it was a mix of decent and not good.

The moderator made a good effort to summarize comments from the in person people who were attending so that us Zoom attendees could hear. That is, he made a good attempt during the first part of the formal meeting.

By the time we got to the instructional part, there was so much audience back-and-forth discussion that I missed out on easily half of it. Fortunately it’s not a topic I need much instruction on, I can figure it out on my own and I got credit for attending.

So in summary, our hybrid meeting was not a resounding success.

[Tradd]

I’ve attended many zoom meeting for my diving club and shipwreck events since Covid hit. The key with the audience who are NOT speaking is for the organizer to mute everyone but the speaker. Before this was figured out, you’d have people talking with others in the room, barking dogs, crying kids, people taking phone calls, etc.

[JaneV2.0]

There's a governmental hearing I need to attend today. It is being held the next island over.
...
I don't think the County will ever go back to pure in-person meetings and hearings - teleconferencing makes it so so much easier for our citizens who live on the other islands here to participate.

This--along with greatly expanded work from home opportunities and telemedicine--is one of the few positive outcomes of the pandemic

[iris lilies]

This--along with greatly expanded work from home opportunities and telemedicine--is one of the few positive outcomes of the pandemic

well, in these plant societies are many old people who will NOT attend meetings via Zoom. They are belligerent about it.

so the small group who bothers to attend participates in a board meeting with 6 in-person people and 2 Zoom Board members, then a general membership meeting with 3 additional Zoom attendees, then a one hour training session, then a slide show of pretty iris.

So they all drive across states to attend this dumb meeting that absolutely could be conducted via Zoom. There are so few people who attend that I thought to myself, oh hell, *I* could host this shindig (because they are always looking for hosts.) But then I thought, naw, I am not going to encourage this silly behavior of meeting in person when we do not have to do that.