Zooming Away To Another Meeting

I’m in a meeting as I write this. It is, as most meetings are these days, a ‘virtual’ meeting. I’m currently using Zoom. I have also used Teams quite a lot. I don’t like either very much.

I’ve never written a blog post in a meeting before, however, as there are 42 people in this meeting and no-one can see or hear me, due to the fact that my camera and microphone are switched off,  I thought it would be a better way of spending the time, rather than actually listening.

I’ve also ‘left’ the meeting to make multiple hot beverages, while still, as far as anyone knew, remaining ‘in the room’.

The meeting has been going on for 45 minutes and is showing no signs of ending any time soon, certainly not within the advertised time span. Hardly any of the agenda items pertain to me. In fact none of them directly pertain to me, but there were a couple of bits that were vaguely useful for me to know about in an abstract way. Those agenda items have long since passed. However, in that respect, this is no different to how these meetings tend to work in ‘real life’.

I can’t write a blog post in the real meetings though.

But I can in this.

I’ve certainly found writing it more diverting than listening to the various people who have been permitted to have their microphones on during the meeting.

Except for the bit when one of the more senior members of staff was struggling with a poor internet connection and sounded a bit like a broken robot. Mainly because people were telling him they couldn’t hear him properly but he also couldn’t hear them so he kept going on and on and people were clearly getting quite vexed by the whole thing.

I enjoy the vexation of others as long as the source of their vexation is not vexing to me. Which this wasn’t.

But in general I do find meetings to be vexing, and virtual meetings are possibly more vexatious than real life meetings.

Some virtual meetings require me to be an active and engaged participant. They are the worst.

This one didn’t though, so I can hardly be blamed for not giving it my full attention.