Thursday, August 19, 2021

Call Me, Bubbles!

There's a comma in the title, so obviously I'd like Bubbles to contact me.  May I suggest contacting me via MS Teams?  I use the email address already known to friends.  Add me.

I retired well before this crippling COVID situation and I have been away from office productivity workflow for a long time.  Frankly, I've had a very hard time trying to get excited about Zoom or any type of video chatting. Of course, I've seen images of monitors showing all the little faces of online participants. I guess it gained importance due to an educational and governmental survival situation.  People could clearly see that we needed better ways to get stuff done during lockdowns and work-from-home. 

I have been a bit skeptical about how Microsoft seems to be putting MS Teams as a central point in the big Windows 11 update that'll be coming later this year.
  MS Teams 
Today, I critically examined how little Jay and I used messaging and video chats, even with close friends. Arranging a little, 6-person dinner party forces us to resort to thirty-year-old tools. I often forget to reply to all in the email app though.  We definitely could use something better. 

However, Shinji doesn't use WhatsApp. Ed, as well as Jiwan, are allergic to Facebook. Tim uses Facetime and a little Facebook but Jay uses primarily Facebook and a little WhatsApp.  You can see why our chat avenues for planning and coordination have been practically non-existent. 

A meeting-type video chat seems evermore unlikely; that is, until today.  I downloaded MS Teams on my Android devices and our Windows PC.   How neat that participants don't need to download anything special to take part in a group video meeting!   It's multiplatform, open-source, and will prove to be transformative. 

I think I will be able to host a video conference even if none of these folks download the actual Teams software.  I can send a link and they can participate on whatever device or operating system they're near.  Of course, getting them completely onboard the Team bandwagon with the iOS, Android, or Windows app would make chat much easier and planning one thousand times more productive.


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