Image: "Remote Calls" from Pixabay licensed by the Pixabay license
Every team needs team meetings. However, your team might live at different places. So remote calls are inevitable. In this article we want to share our experiences considering remote calls.
Which tools are available for remote calls?
meet.jit.si: This website provides videochat rooms which can be freely opend in your browser. Rooms can be indicated or created after the slash. So for example all persons who open the site https://meet.jit.si/serlo in a webbrowser can talk remotely in the room serlo. It is also possible to share your screen (click on the button down below on the left side)
Discord: You can make remote conferences on our Discord Server which is a freely available chat tool. For this you can use one of the free speech channels "Hauptraum", "Nebenraum 1", "Nebenraum 2"
Google: For internal team-meetings or meetings with a lot of people attending it is possible to use Google Hangouts. Ask your Serlo-Guide!
Mobile phone: If there are only two persons or two groups at different places you can also use your phones.
How to organize a remote conference?
Early setup: Take enough time before the remote conference for setting up the technical side. Also all participants should setup their devices and join the conference room beforehand so that technical issues can be solved.
Make sure that you have enough RAM (close not-used programms)
Is your micro activated and your speaker on?
Has your laptop enough battery?
Often it is useful to use a separate PC/laptop for the remote conference
In meetings with a lot of people use an external micro and put it in the middle
Time shedule and protocols: A clearly communicated time shedule and a protocol help to update non-participants and to integrate them. Also a live-protocol on Google-docs helps to set everyone on the same point of the discussion.
Google-Docs and other online-tools are better in integration of remote-participants than analogous methods (pins on a wall, whiteboards, etc.)
Remote moderator: In bigger conferences it is often useful to have a remote-moderator. This person is responsible for the integration of the remote-participants (helps them with technical problems, says when they want to ask questions/give suggestions)
It is recommended that the remote moderator is in a group-chat with all remote participants. There he/she can give hints what is discussed or voted for at the moment.
The remote moderator should't be the moderator of the conference or the workshop, so that this person is relieved.
If you have any other questions considering remote-conferences just ask your Serlo-Guide!
