The impact of digital surge has risen from 40% to 100% with the outbreak of COVID 19. People have learned to adapt to staying indoors and communicating from the comfort of their home. It is the closest they get to actually having a face-to-face moment with loved ones or for work purposes or any other reason. Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won’t create problems. In this blog I will highlight four disadvantages of video conferencing.
Network Instability
To connect clearly both visually and audio, is necessary for just about anyone getting ready to go on a video call, otherwise the experience won’t be successful. That moment when you’re left on the call talking to yourself because the other person dropped off simply because their network was not stable enough. Relying on the network to be 100% working at its best is something that is not guaranteed. Sometimes there is absolutely nothing you can do and just wait for it to stabilize for you to go on with your video conference. But if you’re lucky all you have to do sometimes is just start it up again, but other than that you’re at the mercy of your network which sometimes will just die on you.
Time Zones
Significant time zone differences can highly impact video conferencing. You may want to communicate with someone in an absolutely different time zone which is tricky because they probably are already asleep. And while this might be easy to tackle by setting the meeting ahead of time, it still is not an easy thing to plan out.
Technical issues
Equipment can sometimes be difficult to get under control. One big mistake users of video conferencing equipment make is not testing their equipment before they use them, they decide to wing it. Without a technician to fix the problem when it arises the user of the equipment is left with a situation where they don’t know what to do which causes a delay in the video conferencing. You end up spending time working on the equipment to get started because of a technicality.
Open Applications and Environmental Distractions
Open applications are distractions that come because of having open too many non-essential programs on your tabs, laptop, desktop or iPad. Sometimes we forget to mute ourselves after we speak which leads to a lot of background noise captured in the audio or video recording. These are general distractions environmentally as well as applications on our devices that are unnecessary but always end up being disadvantages to video conferencing.
Conclusion
Well that’s it for this blog on disadvantages of video conferencing. This is not to discourage anyone from using video conferencing methods but rather to put these points into consideration in order to avoid spending hours trying to figure out where you might have gone wrong after the interview is done. Organize yourself and your tech team if you have one. Try and figure out what needs to be done before and after the video call. You can refer to my previous blog where I covered tips for conducting oral history or any kind of interviews via zoom.
For all your transcription needs please contact us and remember always be kind try to stay positive and learn to unwind.