I can’t believe how many virtual meetings in the last three years that people are still sharing their screens.
People seem to share their screens in 3 situations:
- Showing or explaining a document. Whether it be a slideshow or written document, people seem obsessed with idea that no one else knows how to read or that they write just as incompetently as they present.
- Explaining procedure. I get it, things can be complicated. Learn to screen record.
- Collaboration. Most conferencing apps have a whiteboard or other document creation apps have real time collaboration. You just don’t want to use these things because you want to be in 100% control of what’s being written down. You don’t want a meeting, go do your own things, if you feel obligated to turn it into a meeting you just want attention.
We all have a limited time on this earth. We’re not going to remember or care about the meetings in a year or two. Go find something meaningful to do with your life. Stop sharing your screen, and even better yet, don’t have the meeting at all. We’re not going to look back at the end of our lives and wish we’d had more meetings.
Everyone would love to have no meetings. But my job requires meetings. And I require a job to live in society.
Screensharing is useful to present information to an audience. There are alternative collaboration tools but I don’t see screensharing as a bad way to do this- use the right tool for the job.
Drawing up a system architecture? Use a whiteboard (digital or otherwise)
Presenting a powerpoint or whatever, like in a business update? Why wouldn’t you screenshare? The presenter wants to guide the audience through the information, to explain it. In the same way in person you don’t give everyone a powerpoint pack printed out to flick through, you display it and talk through it