Video conferencing is improving at warp speed. Take the time to catch up
I had been thinking about writing about Zoom and its impressive progress in driving innovation for a few days, when I found a notice to download another version (I’ve already lost count of these updates ) of the delicious mmhmm beta version, which has become a must for my video conferences and recordings.
It makes perfect sense for video conferencing apps to take advantage of the present moment to speed up innovation: the environment wants more. From the basic video conferences we used to hold back in February or March — for many of us this was the first contact with the medium, forcing us to spend the first quarter of an hour of each meeting trying to get the application to work for everyone — we have moved on to the habit-forming phase: we are now reasonably comfortable in front of the camera, we have learned netiquette such as muting the microphone when we are not participating or lighting ourselves properly, we use virtual backgrounds (sometimes too often: there’s nothing wrong with a green screen) and we even handle screen sharing reasonably well.
But beyond the improvement that comes with practice, the tools themselves have stepped on the gas and are creating a roadmap based on the freedom to work from wherever we want. Thus, the initial fears and reticence about Zoom are pretty much a…
