No More Virtual Meetings!

I was invited to another virtual event. 

I figuratively snapped at the invitation, "THIS IS A REAL EVENT! It just happens to be online!"

In these modern times of actual remote workers (telecommuters, we used to be called) let's just acknowledge that online interaction with other humans is real. It may just be the most real experience we get with our colleagues/students/families. It is different, but still real.

My Teaching Experience

Teaching is challenging at the best of times. I think I'm doing okay with my online teaching at Lethbridge College. I don't even know how anyone even teaches elementary school at all, never mind online! 

I log in to my [very fast sounding platform] class and sometimes I have a few students arrive before me. They actually chat about their day and their classes. It almost feels like a regular, in-person class. Most, however, have their cameras and microphones off. I do ask them to share A/V because it helps them connect with each other and with me, but I cannot make it compulsory.

I say that it helps me. I'm sure that any other teachers would agree that the micro-feedback you get from a student's face will alway help guide the pace and direction of a class. If I can't see you with a blank look, I can't know that you are lost. I absolutely cannot differentiate between stunned silence and "mute". I even miss the cues I get from the old "You must have questions at this point-- Ask away!". In person, I can see who is trying to formulate questions and who is playing tower defence. I miss it.

My Employee Experience

Coffee. Going to the copier. Going to the loo. Lunch. Moving between classes. These are all things that I miss. These are the ephemeral opportunities to build community, solve problems, share successes (and failures), and generally engage in human interaction.

My area has done a fair job of trying to emulate that with the Centre Coffee chat on [another platform that is closely related to my operating system]. The few times that they have the meeting when I am available, it has been great to just hang out in the same "room" as my co-workers.

On the other hand we have back to back meetings--the bane of my online work experience. Everyone assumes that since there is no travel time required, we can always fill in all the time with a meeting. On the surface this seems like an efficiency-nut's dream-come-true! The sinister side is that a flurry of meetings does not leave time for any decompression or introspection before the next thing crashes in. I fear it encourages us to do "other work" during meetings. And that is bad because it takes us out of the moment.

My Personal Experience

I had opportunity to attend a networking/recruiting event a few nights ago, and I was pleasantly surprised by the platform that HackerX used to host. It provided a main stage, break-out rooms, networking, and the ability for one person to perform the technical support. I want to use this to bolster our business networking and experiential learning components of some courses in our program.

Games night is also a big thing for me. With one of my gaming groups, we meet every 2nd Wednesday online using [a search-engine related meeting platform] and play a selection of games on BoardGameArena.com. I also play Gloomhaven with another friend with the board and bits set up on my table and the [speedy] app sharing the visual. Not quite the same as being there (with the billion little things to do), but it beats NOT doing it.

We've had some shared meals with family (less successful since we all tend to talk at the same time). We've had some shared drinks with friends (more successful since we can drink while others are talking).

Not the same as "in person", but in some cases that is a blessing ;)

My Opinion

The technology is still lacking. 

Internet bandwidth and availability varies wildly around the world, across the country, and even across the city. So many problems might be reduced if we had consistent throughput. And if we didn't have to share with everyone else trying to cram video up and down congested "last-mile" loops.

Not everyone has a laptop. (Although I think the last stats I read suggested everyone has 1.75 phones...) Getting the compute power to crunch the video (and/or de-crunch the video) is crucial for this new meeting space to be seamless and appear real-time.

I wish we could have concurrent audio. Something that would pre-process incoming audio streams and present some kind of aggregate in real time. Conversation is already difficult: we use verbal and non-verbal cues to meter our conversations. When our apps choose to garble or mute overlapping conversations, we lose some of those cues. Our brains seem to be surprisingly good at differentiating speakers (from each other), so maybe the software could let us do that?

Ultimately, all of these experiences and opportunities are real. They happened to me, with me, near me. They affect my life and the lives of my friends, family, students, colleagues, and beyond. This is not "The real world gone virtual". This is just "the real world with some still-fledgling communication tools".

TLDR: This is reality. It isn't virtual.

Just sayin'.

Lethbridge Performing Arts Centre

Worshipful Mayor and Councillors,

Communities — whole and healthy communities— need a balance of culture and sports that include opportunities for all us. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in much needed sports facilities in the past decade. These crucial investments have been disproportionate, and performing arts investments have been continually pushed to the back-burner to accommodate them. It is beyond time to balance the scales.

There are many financial reasons to continue to move forward with a performing arts centre in Lethbridge. There is direct employment benefit in the construction, and lasting economic contribution from the space. StatsCan Provincial and Territorial Cultural Indicators, 2017, provides an estimate of the GDP of sports industries at $828 million, or 0.2% of the Alberta’s GDP. The contribution of culture at $5.3 billion is almost 6.5 times larger than the sports contribution. 

There are also important social reasons to continue moving forward. The impediment to building the performance arts center seems to be a misunderstanding of who it’s for. The argument tends to be along the lines of “hockey players need ice to play hockey”. That becomes dancers need a floor to dance. The problem is a hockey player goes out and plays hockey for the sake of playing hockey. They’re out there to do the thing they are doing. If someone’s watching them, that’s great. If they’re out there just playing hockey to play with their buddies, that’s also great. When a ballet company is out there to put on a ballet, it actually matters if there’s an audience or not. 

Unlike sports, performance of any kind is almost all about interacting with the audience. Performers need the right space, the right equipment, the right auditorium to interact with the audience. The spaces are not about the performers, they are about the interaction between the performers and the audience. The audience needs to be there for the performance to take place. If there is no audience, there is no performance.

The comparison between an athlete and a performer is strong to the extent that they both want to do well and be supported. A performance without an audience is NOT like a hockey player without a rink… it’s a hockey player without a team. 

The focus on performance arts spaces is often on those perceived as using them… the actors, the dancers, the singers, the bands, the orchestras, the performers. However, that’s NOT who the primary users of these spaces is… it’s the audiences who come to see the performances. That’s who we’re really cutting off every time any performance arts space in Lethbridge is postponed. There have been no additions of any dedicated performance-only spaces in Lethbridge since the Sterndale Bennett Theatre was added to the Genevieve E. Yates Memorial Centre…. nearly 30 years ago. 

I challenge you to think honestly and deeply about these points, and I urge you vote to maintain the drive and funding for a new performing arts centre in Lethbridge.

In earnest,

Stephen Graham

Lethbridge, Alberta