When doing Zoom or other online meetings, do you like the video feature or would you prefer to just use audio?

Audio only. I find the video very distracting from the content personally.

Video. You can learn SO much more from facial expressions than from audio only.

All of our work meetings these days are GoToMeeting with cameras on. Most customer meetings as well.

Gahh. I don’t like doing Zoom stuff at all. I hate it, in fact.

I’ve participated in a few Zoom meetings, and I find the videos so distracting. It’s like a screen full of animated gifs (which I also dislike), with most people seemingly unaware that they’re on video. How can they not know? Yet I see them eating, chewing gum, nodding off, tilting back so I just see the top of their head, operating a sewing machine right next to the camera so we see this giant moving hand filling the window, crying, fooling with the dog, laughing at some other website, and even (once) going to the bathroom.

And forgetting to mute the slurping, munching, etc.

They would not be doing this in a real meeting. They would at least be pretending to pay attention, and they would be keeping the slurping to a minimum.

It does seem to suit people who like having an audience, but I’m not one of them, at least not in terms of live performance. I swear some of them are actually playing to the audience instead of just making their contribution to the meeting.

I don’t want to appear onscreen, so I don’t enable the video. I enable the audio but keep it on mute and don’t say a word. Three months now and I haven’t spoken in a meeting. Some people are wondering if I’m growing a killer backlog of opinions.

Yes, I know. I’m still not ready for the twentieth century. So write me a letter on paper and I’ll answer it in two weeks.

@Jeruba We must have similar co-workers, you put it very well. Haha!

I have enabled the video once to say hello to a coworkers child, that’s it. I’m not putting on make-up and fixing my hair for a 30 min meeting.

I like the full video and the Brady Bunch/Hollywood Squares format. Since I use zoom for AA meetings, it is nice to see people’s faces

We use WebEx for work, and you can see a subset of participants. I like that too.

I wonder if more men would always choose video since they are the more ‘visual’ sex.

In general I like the video. My space is pack-rat mess but I don’t mind that it shows up that way.
I’ve been on three types of calls:
– social calls, anything goes and it’s fun to see familiar faces that I haven’t seen in a while.
– workshops, people get advice on their musical performance. We see dogs walk in and out, cats jump on participants and their musical instruments, and my parrot usually gets a moment on camera.
– business conference call – these were all moderated and nobody could see me which was just as well in a context of mostly strangers getting together for a presentation.

I haven’t had any zoom meetings for work, I probably wouldn’t mind video with people I know and work with. I would enjoy the peek into their lives beyond the usual business blah-blah.