LeSving wrote:
It’s the meetings, and corresponding travelling, that has proven to be redundant (and a time hog), but this change had already started long before corona, especially among the younger generation.
Yes and no.
For sure, some meetings are perhaps just timehogs where alot of BS is spouted and not a lot decided. But I have first hand experience of various projects where the regular “everyone involved” meeting was stopped and as a result there were many unnecessary problems which wouldnt have previously cropped up costing huge ammounts of extra time and money because someone would have noticed and said “If you do that, I cant then do this” or “I need to this first, before you do that, not after”…etc..
Regards SD..
Zoom etc meetings are an interesting challenge on participation rules. Some % of people don’t want to be on a webcam so they sit there with it turned off, which most regard as disrespectful to anyone making an effort, and it gets a bit spooky to be talking to half a room where people have paper bags over their heads 
And if you say webcams must be on, participation drops right off. I think a lot of people trying to get stuff done will get p1ssed off with this and perhaps schedule 1 day a week for a physical meeting.
Some people have the luxury of a proper home office with closed cabinets or bookshelves in the back, a door to close for privacy, etc.
Others have to do their Zoom, Teams, Skype, etc. meetings from their kitchen table with the dishes from last dinner in the back, small children jumping around (and leaving their “marks” anywhere), etc.
I understand that the second group is often much more reluctant to turn on the cam than the first group.
Quite a lot of video conferencing stuff allows you to put in a virtual background, and I was pretty impressed with how well the Zoom one worked. Don’t know if it would work with mobile things like kids jumping around, but it would certainly conceal dirty dishes or your racy calendar on the wall. Just download a suitable “office wall” or “businessy” background and you’re done.
Some people use this on the EuroGA Zoom sessions. It works fairly well. The software tries to identify your head and shoulder outline. You get funny effects when someone is say drinking out of a bottle – the software does not expect a large object (the bottle, or your arm) sticking out of the side of your head
Frankly I doubt if anybody (who knows you) cares about the background. I just have my home office/workshop there.
I know a big % of people totally object to being on a video. We see this on the EuroGA Zoom. Participation drops right off if you tell people to not sit there with the cam turned off. Also there are the “armchair security specialist” concerns about zoom, resulting in another bunch of people refusing to use it, even though the discussion is just trivial. This will be a new challenge for many employers, because I am sure they will simply not allow cam-off participation.
I have seen reports that compares Covid to Aids. In the sense that it will never leave you alone once you have it. And eventually die from its effects. If that is true then call the mortality quotes so far are b.s. and morrality has to be defined by time rather than how many survive.
In any case the 2nd wave is in full swing all over Europe and again we see denial and half hearted measures. Some countries now appear to consider 14 day quarantined for entry. I guess that will kill the airline industry for good if it comes true
Mooney_Driver wrote:
In any case the 2nd wave is in full swing all over Europe
Can you point to any area which is having cases of the order of magnitude to the initial wave that occured there? I’m yet to see this.
Switzerland is over R<1 by a margin (1.8 or so) and up to 150 new cases per day from 20 two weeks ago and I expect so are most other places too. I would assume R is going towards 3 or 4 in Serbia by the looks of it. Not sure about BG but it must be over 1 there too as every day there are more new cases than on the previous day also around 170 now, from about 60 last week.So it is only a question of time until it becomes uncontrolled again like in February and March.
Many may be in denial but that is what caused things to go out of control in Winter…..R will always go high in spots. If 1 person infects 10 you have a local R of 10. But a competent tracing action should pick up the first one even if some of the other 10 don’t report anything.
Actually this was always the case. Probably, in the open countryside, R never went above like 0.1 or 0.01, but a govt could not (politically, and practically) lock down just cities.
