Manage the Technology
Choosing video, phone, or chat is just the beginning. How can you determine whether your internet connection is actually up to hosting real-time file sharing between 14 people? Can you position your webcam so that people aren’t distracted by the stacks of messy paper on the bookshelf behind you?
Even with something as basic as your meeting platform, much effort goes into making technology truly functional. Indeed, you probably rely on several other devices in addition to your main communication tool, from the tablet you use to view a PDF mid-chat to the Google Docs file you’ve created to capture real-time notes.
To make all this work, you’ll identify which tools you need, practice ahead of time, and prepare for the inevitable technical glitches.
Assess your needs
“Your needs” is an umbrella term here. In fact, you should be thinking about three parties: you, your colleagues, and your organization (if you work for one). For yourself, start by considering how technology can support your own goals for the meeting:
• Will you need to record the meeting? If so, how? Will you take notes offline or on a document-sharing platform such as Google Drive, where participants can see each other’s edits live?
• Will you require a secondary communication channel during the meeting? If so, will you use it to solicit questions or input from a large group, or do you want a private place to interact with individual participants (a presenter, your boss, a colleague) during the meeting?
• How will you share materials, such as an agenda or a presentation deck, before the meeting? Do you want people to be able to view and edit these documents together at the same time?
• How will you follow up? What do you want participants to do after this meeting, and which tools will they need to do that? How will you track their progress or post follow-up messages? If you expect the meeting to spill over into follow-up discussions, where will those take place?
Next, evaluate your attendees’ needs. You’re mainly concerned about accessibility here: Which setup will allow them to participate most fully in the conversation? Consider issues such as:
• Which meeting tools do they already know how to use? For tools that are unfamiliar, will they have time to learn how to use them before your meeting? Will you tutor new users or help them get the appropriate training on their own?
• Will they be using their computer, tablet, or phone?
• Will they be calling in from a car or staying put?
• Can they participate in a high-quality internet-based meeting? What results do they get from an internet speed test?
• How do they prefer to communicate? (For more on why this question matters, see the section “Bridge Linguistic or Cultural Barriers” in the last chapter.)
To answer these questions, gather input from the other participants, perhaps after drafting your agenda. If you hold your meeting on a platform that no one can operate, your meeting will fail. So if you decide to go with a new-to-them tool, talk to participants about how they plan to become familiar with it, and offer help if you can.
Finally, evaluate the security requirements your company has for this meeting. These rules protect your organization’s business interests and shield it from legal liability. Planning your meeting in accordance with these rules helps your company manage risk and maintain its competitive advantage. Top security questions include:
• Do you need to record the meeting? What form should the recording take—for example, an auditory or a written transcript? Typed notes?
• Will you be discussing sensitive, proprietary information?
• What rules does your organization have for how that information is shared and stored? What security functionality does your meeting need (for example, with document sharing or a video connection)?
• Are participants in a location where they can safely speak about or view sensitive material? For example, do they have a quiet, private space (an office at another branch, a home office), or are they in a more chaotic and public location (a coffee shop, an airport lounge)?
Choose your tools
This exercise should generate a list of tool requirements (“I’ll need to set up a chat thread for back-channel communications”) and a list of constraints (“Katina can only join via mobile phone”). Map them against one another, and you’ll come up with some viable options (“Text or a mobile-enabled chat service”).
To pinpoint the best option, take an inventory of the resources currently available to you. Start by fixing your own location for this meeting. It could be your office, a conference room, or your kitchen table. What kind of setup can you reasonably manage from here? Pay attention to details such as video and teleconference links, a phone with speakerphone function, Wi-Fi signal strength, and the number of devices you can easily monitor at once. Then consider how each of these elements is likely to play out for remote attendees. For example, maybe broadband internet at your company’s office means that you can run a teleconference app with complex security measures while streaming videos and using a cloud-based tool. But if your coworker is relying on hotspot technology at the airport, they probably can’t keep up.
As you’re working through these questions, find out what services IT support offers for setting up and running a virtual meeting. Can they suggest a tool based on your meeting’s needs or talk your remote attendees through a software setup? Even if you don’t have company employees on call to answer these questions, a onetime consult with a specialist might be worth the fee.
Test your setup
Once you’ve picked your tools, you’ll want to try them out a few days before the meeting, to make sure you can start right in on your agenda on the actual meeting day.
Conduct a dry run. Tag one virtual attendee to test your meeting technologies. Schedule a time to practice initiating the conference call or video chat. Your checklist for this exercise includes:
• Making sure your colleague has all the information they need to join the meeting, including a call-in number, a link, or a passcode. If for some reason you can only share that information right before the call starts, make a plan for how you’ll get it to everyone.
• Checking that the sound and video quality are good and that any lag time is manageable.
• Establishing that auxiliary tools, such as screen sharing or private chat, are working. Ascertain that your colleague can use these tools or view and receive materials during the call without losing audio or video quality or experiencing excessive delays.
• Putting in good order all the hardware you need, including cords and a power source.
If your setup is too elaborate—Skype plus Hip-Chat, with lots of screen sharing and open Google Docs files—you may want to scale back and then test your revised approach. Time how long it takes you to initiate the meeting, and decide whether you need an IT specialist on hand.
Confirm your space and resources before the meeting. The day before your meeting, double-check that the room you booked is really yours, that any hardware you’re borrowing from the office is ready to go, and that the IT department knows what you need from it. At this time, you’ll also want to send an e-mail with the meeting’s call-in information to your attendees, and ask them to confirm that they have the space and resources to be productive participants. It’s up to them to secure these conditions for themselves, but you can help with a timely reminder.
Do a preflight check. Get to the meeting location at least 15 minutes early to set up your materials and quickly test each function. If you’re using a conference room, build this time into the room’s booking.
What to do when technology fails
As the meeting leader, you have to anticipate and prepare for problems both on your end and with the other participants. Several best practices will help you handle any potential hiccups.
Appoint a tech czar. Ask one participant to act as the go-to problem solver for the other meeting participants: If someone can’t access materials or if their internet connection keeps failing, they contact this tech czar. For this solution to work, take these steps:
• Pick someone familiar with the tools you’re using, so the person can help solve basic problems. Don’t pick someone who’ll be presenting information or facilitating a discussion, since they won’t have the bandwidth to do both jobs well.
• Provide a way for attendees to get in touch with them: phone, chat, e-mail, text—whatever works best for your meeting as a supplementary communication channel. But don’t pick the medium that you’re using for the meeting itself. Notify all attendees about this policy in the big e-mail you send out before the meeting.
• Invite the tech czar to sit in on your dry run for the meeting, and make sure they know how to get in touch with IT if they need additional help during the actual meeting.
Make a technology crisis card for yourself. Write down (on paper!) the tech information you might need if a problem arises during the meeting, and keep it next to your computer or tablet, so that you can quickly access it. Share a copy with your tech czar. Relevant items include:
• Name and phone number(s) of your IT support. Get the number for an individual specialist, not the departmental line.
• Name of your internet service provider and a help-line phone number.
• The account information for your most important tools, including the name of the account holder, the account number, the e-mail address it’s registered under, password hints, purchase information, and so on.
• Name and version of your computer’s current operating system.
You shouldn’t actually be calling your internet provider’s help line in the middle of a meeting—that’s something IT support or your tech czar can do for you, while you carry on as best you can. But you want to hand off as much information as possible to these helpers so that they can work through the problem on their own, without interrupting the group to ask you questions.
Have a backup plan. What if you’re unable to continue the meeting? In that event, be prepared to tell your colleagues what’s happening, and decide how you want to proceed, whether that means rescheduling for later, moving to another communication channel, or canceling the meeting altogether and moving your business to e-mail. If you can make this backup plan ahead of time, do so. For example, you might send out a conference call number and tell people you’ll switch to that channel in case of emergency.
Whatever approach you choose, don’t leave your participants wondering what happened. Send an e-mail or a text explaining the situation: “The internet is down at our office, and we need to reschedule this meeting for a later date. Apologies for the inconvenience. I’ll be in touch soon to find a time that works for everyone.”
Canceling a meeting is frustrating, maybe even embarrassing, but it’s not the worst thing that can happen with technology. What’s worse is when your tools work, but everyone is using them in different ways. So how can you get everyone on the same page about how your meeting will work? We’ll discuss that in the next chapter.