Hybrid Meetings
Hybrid meetings are meetings with both in-room and remote participants and this present some unique obstacles.
Video conferencing calls are not live, and they are non-synchronous. This means that what you see and hear on your computer or personal device happened roughly 1 second ago, and is also not happening at exactly the same time as the others on the call. This isn't a problem when people are in different rooms as there is no live action to reference the audio and video to, and may result in nothing more than someone saying "I'm sorry I didn't mean to talk over you".
However in a live environment it presents as outlined below:
- The audio and video is not live, what you would experience on your personal device would be roughly a second or more delayed over what you would experience live in the room.
- The call is non-synchronous meaning your in-room neighbors device is having a call at a slightly different time than yours. This means that when you are speaking, every device would output your voice at a different times creating a very unusual audio experience for everyone in the room. The truth is the scenario is completely unworkable, as the audio loops and feedback created by them would render the solution unusable.
- Even with all this, there are those who will suggest wearing isolating headphones. Even with this, and strictly looking down at ones screen the experience would be unnatural and inconvenient.
We must treat the room as one single live instance, all audio and video happening in the room would have no discernable latency to the in-room participants. Cameras pointing at people when they talk, so that they are in scene. Audio with echo cancellation, acoustic and feedback control which are properly managed. Remote participants who can join the "in-room" experience without issue, this should be the Hybrid experience.
