Live and die by Zoom

I’ve been impressed by Zoom and surprised that there have not been any major crashes yet during the mandatory work from home era. It’s a testament to the company and the public market has been responding with a high valuation on Zoom stock.

While Zoom and videoconferencing has gone a long way over the last few years, there’s still a lot to be desired. Maybe I’m just old school, but I don’t think much can be done to replace that face to face interaction at the current moment.

On Friday, we had a company all-hands meeting and I couldn’t help but to think things were just a bit more awkward than normal. Our team is spread between Amsterdam and San Francisco so usually these calls make each office get together in a meeting room where there’s a lot of fun exchanges. We didn’t get the same effect on this all-hands.

On top of that, there were some minor technical difficulties. My screen was on a lag so my quick presentation was a bit derailed. People who had questions would ask them at same time causing the, “no you go ahead” exchange. Some people clearly had better microphones than others and a few folk were hard to hear.

On the flip side, maybe I’m just spoiled and looking for things to complain about. After all, video conferencing tools like Zoom allowed our team of 35+ spread all over the world to get together on a video chat.

Yesterday, my college friends and I started a happy hour video chat with 6 people that grew to over 20. Some people hadn’t seen each other for almost 10 years and Zoom brought us all together in a mini college reunion.

We were able to share stories, drink beers, and even take a few shots together. After about 4 hours, our crew was drunk and merry like we would have been if we had all been in a bar together in Seattle where we met. I had a blast.

Perhaps it’s not fair to complain about Zoom. Yes, there’s a lot left to be desired, but it’s made our lives significantly better during this time. Maybe my complaints are mainly just an adjustment period. Maybe by the end of this quarantine, I’ll look to Zoom as the thing that got me through it or maybe I’ll be so sick of it that I’ll never want to do a video conference call again.

Either way, I’m glad videoconferencing tools like Zoom exist and I am excited to see the new innovation that comes in the next few years in regards to video conferencing.