Out of necessity, I've gotten better at recording videos over the past year. Certain things are easier with video; I basically have a teleprompter in some form. But, yeah, I'd much rather talk to a live audience.

How about pre-prepared video talks that are available online and then a dedicated "hallway track" in person meetup straight after for Q&A, labs, impromptu discussions, tiny quiches and all that stuff.

I feel like these issues are caused by a lack of sophistication on the part of the conference organizer. Everyone has cameras and microphones bristling on their spyware sensor packs in their pocket let alone their computers. If you can’t see and interact with your audience, that’s just a failure of integrating all those devices in a way you can benefit from. It feels like as an engineer we should be leaning into the challenges the situation presents and finding clever solutions. Maybe emitting earth ending emissions to move your sack of mostly water to physically collocate so you can see the actual photons reflecting off someone’s face rather than a high fidelity reproduction just feels wasteful, no? These are legit gripes but they also don’t feel like a P=NP problem

Do you have any idea what an audience of 50 people "giving feedback" on Zoom look like? You cannot play with the audience because half of them are mute, there is a constant lag between the moment you say anything and the moment you get their response, there's always the arsehole with a microphone too loud, or the idiot with an echo.

Presenting remotely in real-time is a pain in the arse, and sucks everything that's enjoyable out of making presentations.

Maybe zoom isn’t the best tool for the job? Just because it was the tool laying around when a global natural disaster forces us into isolation for a year and a half doesn’t mean it was a tool purpose built for these situations based on extensive global experiences.

Sounds like a case of “I don’t like the tools so therefore the domain must be insurmountable,” which tells me it’s ripe for some very clever people with some strong experience and opinions on how to organize online conferences and workshops to make a fortune.

There are great tool trying to do virtual gatherings.

However there will always be a difference between a crowd in a room and a digital representation. There's lots of subtle stuff in a room (are they all looking forward or are the talking to their neighbor?) Which are hard to translate. Especially if people switch of camera&mic etc. while watching without any interest in sharing.

The Chaos Computer Club did a quite good "hallway track" for the rC3 event https://links.rc3.world/

Companies like https://mingle.cloud try to do virtual event platforms as a business.

Things improve, but it's always gonna be different.

And yes, for.some events it's good enough, for others it's even a better replacement. But some things work better human to human

Further some companies like https://www.freeman.com have leaned heavily into making hybrid events a real thing that works well.

I think the point is some people find one vs the other better, not that there’s one true way for all. The world will be better if we can figure out how to be inclusive of all styles, not just the style extroverts prefer.

I think in a hybrid event you would both have a crowd in a room and a crowd remote. This seems fine.

A lot of the issues issues (like latency, the fact that every microphone has different characteristics, that bad networks are a thing, that people get disturbed all the time when they are at home or in their office) are independent on the exact software you use.

From my point of view it has some obvious advantages, like no need to travel. But it is not a satisfying replacement by a long shot.

I've just been pre-recording videos for external events. This has some advantages relative to doing it live.

- I can do some different things when I record and edit such as inserting clips that aren't just a slide and me as a talking head. (Though having a thumbnail of the speaker is a practice I hope we keep versus just talking to a full screen slide.)

- Reduce the likelihood of network-related or other issues at my end.

- Can interact with an audience in real-time in chat.

- Can redo sections that don't come out well.

Having done that a couple of times during the last year, I don't really like it. The fact that it is recored makes obvious any flaw in delivery or hesitation. This leads to a long cycle of re-recording and re-editing that is very time consuming. Particularly grating is the occasional helicopter or lorry that goes by, resulting in yet another pass of recording and editing.

I also have to control everything about the environment (lightning, background, microphone and camera quality, etc), which is a pain compared to a conference organiser providing technical support.

So it is much more time-consuming to record the presentation compared to preparing it for live delivery.

I agree that pre-recording is better than live over video, for the reasons you mention (otherwise, there is nothing you can do regarding any stray helicopter or your router having a bad day).

I hate interacting in chat. Everything feels fake and wrong. People always need to pay attention to everything, lest they interrupt someone starting a sentence or trying to intervene (any latency is really bad in a vocal discussion). This is a bad imitation of chatting with other people over a beer.

The ability to re-record is a mixed blessing: it is a time sink and it is very difficult to be satisfied with the result if you are even mildly perfectionist. It would be better if we had access to professionals to record and edit talks, but we haven't.

I was really comparing live over video to pre-recorded over video. I agree it's easier in many ways in person and that's my preference. (That said, my videos on YouTube are watched by far more people than in-person unless I'm giving a keynote.)

That said, it's gotten easier over the past year. My office is pretty much set up as a studio now with lighting, mikes, camera and so forth. And I've learned things like better eye discipline. I've also learned that, sure, I should do a retake if I really flub something (or, umm, forgot to hit the record button). But for anything longer than a very short clip, it doesn't need to be perfect.

But, then, this is one of the things I do for a living so it's been worth the time and money to get things right.

The problem is that the “lack of tools” is just too big to overcome. If all your sound comes off a pair of speakers, there is no realistic chance to reproduce the depth and complexity of a real room, where you can perceive immediately which sounds to prioritise. You’d need a full surround system, then you’d need a webconf instrument that can interact with it properly, then you’d need the equivalent for vision - a single screen is just too small and depth perception is nil. And you can’t really get there incrementally - it will continue to suck hard until you have every element sorted out. And of course there will always be “i can’t hear you now, can you hear me? Oh, she’s disconnec— ‘I’m here everybody, sorry Jerry, what were you saying?’ - I was saying that — ‘I can’t hear you Jerry!’ “ etc etc