On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Tobias Klausmann <klausman@gentoo.org> wrote:

It depends how you run it. We have teams having a video thing
open during the day with there geographically-diverse other team
members and it works well for them. For those teams, it also
improves cohesion. Geographically-diverse teams always have to
actively fight the us-vs-them vibe that seems to be fundamental
human nature. Aforementioned video link is part of that.

Sure, but first of all these are private meetings, and not public ones. Even more, they are meetings private to the company, and not even with customers. You can tell that the response to a public vs private meeting is definitely different. I've witnessed before people trying go show off even more just because a camera is involved, which can be obnoxious, in my opinion.

> And unlike IRC meetings, you can cannot multitask, say making
> your dinner while discussing this or that feature.

As others have pointed out, this is a double edged sword:
Sometimes, having less distraction (or getting away with less
distraction) is a Good Thing.

Yeah sure if you can afford it. One thing that people seem to miss is that Gentoo is _not_ an employment. And while we'd like to keep professional behaviour, the system of incentives and disincentives that work for an employment position do not apply to organizations like Gentoo.

> A VC is a full commitment, and its attractiveness is often much
> higher _before_ you use it..

This does not hold true for me. I'd never used VC before joining
my current company, and I love it -- iff the alternative is not
meeting at all or text-only. As I pointed out above, it is
crucial for team cohesion.

Sure and in some ways it's a least worst option. On the other hand you and I both know that it's not as easy as saying "okay let's all meet at 7" — timezones, hardware issues, connection issues, you name it. We sidestep most of these issues as the various problems have been ironed out before.. but to start doing "regular" hangouts between Gentoo teams? It's going to involve lots of work.

If you want to have a distincly productive meeting, you need an
agenda/goals and someone to _run_ the meeeting. But that is true
of IRC meetings, too.

About the only thing that IRC meetings are invariably better at,
is logging. Note, however, that logging is no replacment for
agendas or summarizing the outcome of the meeting.

On the other hand, I would be _very_ much against using Hangouts for anything that involves decision-making or explanation of future planning, for the very reasons I originally pointed out:

* they require too much time set aside (I can't even lurk a Hangout if I'm cooking, or working, or my phone only knows what);

* they are not for everyone (English is not universal as we'd wish it is — if it wasn't for last year's experience, I wouldn't want speaking English in public; William also pointed out another reason);

* I don't expect a great signal to noise, not only at the beginning but throughout: try to imagine an unmoderated IRC channel being spoken aloud, then add a bunch of "can you hear/see me?" from every other participant, the "what did you say? I can't understand you" and so on so forth.

Honestly, I see as much potential to cause further issues in a team as there is to solve them.