Today was the first public OSMF board meeting with video and i thought i’d share a few observations on it.

As background - i had made some general comments on what things would deserve consideration regarding the form of board meetings as well as some more specific concerns regarding the form of hosting for the communication platform. It seems there were some difficulties in understanding that for the board due to differences in the timeframe we looked at the matter on - my considerations were largely long term (read: several years) while the board members seemed to look at it more short term in terms of the next few months.

Anyway - here i am going to share my practical observations, which is probably more strait away to understand.

The newly introduced platform seems to work fairly well - i have not measured the bandwidth requirements so i can’t really tell about that quantitatively but obviously having videos from seven participants being available to you is going to be quite demanding.

As a website running on the web browser this platform has the advantage of not requiring you to install a specific software. OTOH the usability on devices with small screens, in particular phones, is probably severely limited. I also could not find a way to select the microphone to use from within the app. If anyone knows how this can be done please let me know. But obviously this is a minor issue.

If i compare it in terms of audio quality with Mumble i would say it was somewhat worse - but not bad. This assessment is slightly difficult because the use of a video based system has led all participants to set up in a room with a desktop computer or laptop and most with a headset while on Mumble many participants often used a mobile phone. This has a positive effect on the audio quality but that is independent of the platform of course.

The more interesting part is of course how this change in communication platform affected the social aspects. This is of course difficult to say reliably from just one meeting so here just a few more anecdotal observations. There were more guests listening in that usually on Mumble - which might be indicative for lower access hurdles but could also be affected by the meeting having been more prominently announced than other meetings and by the novelty of it being a video meeting.

Personally as someone listening in i had very little benefit from the additional video. The most significant use of the video bandwidth seemed to have been that it was used by the members to indicate they wanted to say something through raise of hand. There was also some occasional nodding or thumbs up gestures but overall most members seemed to be wearing a poker face most of the time.

What i found a bit annoying was the shared drawing board where many of the guests but also some of the board members were drawing on during the meeting. Now while this is certainly a nice and creative activity to engage in and potentially helpful as a communication instrument i doubt it made it easier to focus on the matters of the meeting.

This leads me to a different and more principal observation: Adding additional communication channels to a meeting does not necessarily create an improvement because it also has the potential to divert attention. On mumble this was relatively simple - you had the audio channel and you had a simple text chat. Now on BBB you in addition have the video for every board member and the drawing board and a shared document in addition. In a real world face-to-face meeting someone speaking inherently demands attention, in particular if the meeting is in a relatively small circle. But in an online meeting this is less so and additional communication channels - while having the potential to bring additional benefit - also have the potential to be distracting.

The really interesting question is of course if the new style made the meeting is ultimately more productive. But this is not something i feel i can make an assessment of just from one meeting. There was a full agenda, some of the things discussed were a bit difficult to follow because they were about things that have not (yet) been made available to the OSMF members (stuff from the screen to screen meeting, the OSM US topic). There was productive discussion on some of the topics.

The other IMO important question is how the different style of meeting affects the communication between the board and the members. This is again difficult to tell from just one meeting. No one took the opportunity after the main meeting to ask questions to the board but that also happened on Mumble in the past sometimes. Yet - as i mentioned before - the more hierarchical situation with the board members on video and the guests not and the guests either having to talk in an asymmetric fashion or to show themselves to everyone else could create an additional hurdle.

The speaking slot for OSM Italy as a local chapter worked reasonably well technically but IMO also well demonstrated how real time audio conversation puts people who are not so fluent in English at a distinct disadvantage. As said on the mailing list before - this is IMO not a framework that would provide equal opportunity for different local communities with different cultural backgrounds.

I want to keep this limited to my impressions on the form of the meeting so no comments on the individual agenda items that were discussed - many of which of course probably deserve a longer discussion (which however will in some cases have to wait until we get access to the whole background).

Update: Anonymaps was so nice to post a screenshot:

https://twitter.com/Anonymaps/status/1251187683042357251