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.
I know my context here is different, but sharing my screen is an easy and quick way to show how to do something. I use discord constantly to show what setting to change, or what order mods should be in for friends, or how to set up that V rising server with the save file from last time, or how to fix that weird bug that my buddy describes and I immediately recall and know how to fix.
There are times a proper video or document are better, but I’d argue only when you’re showing or teaching a process to a large number of people, over a spread out period of time, like a doc on how to set up your company email for new hires or something like that.
If its a short demo in a meeting for a simple process or temporary issue, its just a huge time saver to be able to just show people how to do it right then and there. Plus a screen share can be flexible enough to answer unexpected questions or issues that a static doc might not, like if tim has his start menu on the side, or mary doesn’t have the right directx version installed and you gotta swerve to fix the edge cases. Hard with a static doc or premade vid, easy with a screen share.
If it can be explained in a premade video or a slideshow it probably doesn’t need to be a meeting anyways. Just send it out and deal with issues as they arise.
Of course I come at the concept more from a basic IT perspective so ymmv, but for me its a very useful and flexible tool that can save me time and make explaining things much simpler.