Will Chime Fix Meetings?

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Chime_splash_1Amazon is introducing Chime, a new product for online meetings and videoconferencing. Described as "Frustration-free meetings with exceptional audio and video quality," Chime is designed to compete with products like Skype, Google Hangouts, and GoToMeeting.  

GeekWire quotes an Amazon executive about the program:

"It's pretty hard to find people who actually like the technology they use for meetings today," said Gene Farrell, Vice President, Enterprise Applications at AWS in a press release. "Most meeting applications or services are hard to use, deliver bad audio and video, require constant switching between multiple tools to do everything they want, and are way too expensive."

Conference calls have become a joke. The video "A Conference Call in Real Life" has received more than 14.5 million views, and "A Video Conference Call in Real Life" has more than 700,000. 

The Chime promotional materials focus on the technology, of course: ease of joining, automatic reconnection, mobile access, notifications, etc. But what about the people skills involved in managing a meeting? Isn't most of a meeting's success dependent on the leader and participants? Sure, technology can ruin an online meeting, but so can the people managing it.

Discussion:

  • What, if anything, do you find appealing about Chime? How does it compare to other meeting programs?
  • What percentage of an online meeting's success is attributable to the people? The technology? Is Chime over-promosing?