On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 00:33, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm strongly in favor of voice conferencing of
some sort (Skype or
otherwise) due to the difference in the amount of time text and speech take
to convey ideas. For example, recently, I have been exit-interviewing some
enwp editors. Of those interviews I've done over the phone or skype, I was
able to complete the entire question set in about 30 minutes. Whereas, the
same question set took about 4 hours to complete over gtalk and IRC. In
other words, conveying roughly the same ideas over text took about 8 times
longer than voice.
For the sake of keeping our synchronous meetings both brief and effective, I
feel strongly that we should pursue some voice communication system.
The most productive way of group communication is asynchronous, which
puts mailing lists and wikis at the first place:
* Writing (typing) is slower than talking. However, it is faster to
read, than to listen. And it is, actually, better, as group
communication is "many-to-many": we need to read/listen a lot and
write/talk much less.
* Thoughts are well structured, unlike in any synchronous communication.
* It is not necessary to wake up at 4:00 [at the morning] to be able
to participate in discussion because it is the most acceptable time
for meeting for all participants.
* Communication flow is much slower, but the nature of our job is not executive.
* Publicly archived mailing list is more transparent than Skype conference.
So, I prefer to have the most important communication and the most of
communication via mailing list. (To be honest, I can't imagine what we
can do better by talking instead of writing [asynchronously].) But, if
there is a need for conferences, except technical issues which I've
mentioned, I am fine with any type of synchronous communication.