<story><title>Amazon Chime</title><url>https://chime.aws/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jaruzel</author><text>What you need there then (if you are a Windows shop - unlikely), is Lync or Skype for Business.&lt;p&gt;Despite it being Microsoft, I&amp;#x27;ve found it to be the most reliable and seamless system for multi-party Audio, Video, and Screen-sharing based meetings - and I&amp;#x27;ve used at some time or another in my career almost all the other big hitters in the corporate virtual-conferencing space.&lt;p&gt;Combine Lync&amp;#x2F;SfB with one of those nice multi-camera units[1] that sit in the middle of the meeting table and provide audio tracking of the speaker (the active camera switches to the person speaking) along with always-on 360 degree video as well - and it&amp;#x27;s the closest you can get to being there.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.polycom.co.uk&amp;#x2F;products-services&amp;#x2F;products-for-microsoft&amp;#x2F;lync-optimized&amp;#x2F;cx5500-unified-conference-station.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.polycom.co.uk&amp;#x2F;products-services&amp;#x2F;products-for-micr...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>Most place I&amp;#x27;ve worked, we&amp;#x27;d waste anywhere from 5-10 minutes at the beginning of every meeting just trying to get A&amp;#x2F;V systems and voice conferencing to work.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Anyone there? Hello? Crap, someone needs to dial in as the host. OK Is everyone dialed in? Good. Oh, wait, Roger can&amp;#x27;t hear us. Roger, dial back in. OK. Hey, whoever is at the cocktail party, can you go on mute?? Thank you. All right. Who&amp;#x27;s projecting? The projector is VGA, does anyone have a laptop with VGA? How about a dongle? Great, we can see it now. Can everyone who&amp;#x27;s remote see the screen sharing? No? OK let&amp;#x27;s restart the screen sharing program. How about now? Shit, we lost Roger again! Why is the screen 640x480? Damnit, can we just use a different laptop? E-mail the presentation to Diane, we can use her laptop. Did Roger dial back in yet??&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s almost universally an awful UX.</text></item><item><author>krashidov</author><text>Enterprise conferencing software is so bad and so expensive I&amp;#x27;m astonished it took this long for a decent competitor to come in. I&amp;#x27;m really surprised Google didn&amp;#x27;t go all in with making Hangouts a decent competitor. I have a feeling this will make a lot of money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wRastel27</author><text>Our company has used 3 generations of polycom devices and they have all been terrible&amp;#x2F;unusable. Those units are just an IT nightmare because of how they are set up. The newer ones require two ethernet ports if you want them wired (because reasons?), and then also act as a weird computer joining the meeting. If you are in a room with a device, the room has to be invited and join the meeting, then you have to make sure that polycom device is set up with sound but that everything else in the room is muted or else the electronic Harpies will be unleashed. Then if you want screen sharing and video, since the video is regulated by the polycom but screen is shared on a laptop, you can potentially get the video in video in video recursive fun time which will result in fun buffering.&lt;p&gt;We have &amp;quot;quick&amp;quot; instructions on how to use these devices and they take up a whole page. Most of the devices are abandoned or just left there gathering dust while we use a simple Jabra speaker puck.&lt;p&gt;PS - Most of these experiences are with SfB. These devices are somehow worse with Webex.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon Chime</title><url>https://chime.aws/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jaruzel</author><text>What you need there then (if you are a Windows shop - unlikely), is Lync or Skype for Business.&lt;p&gt;Despite it being Microsoft, I&amp;#x27;ve found it to be the most reliable and seamless system for multi-party Audio, Video, and Screen-sharing based meetings - and I&amp;#x27;ve used at some time or another in my career almost all the other big hitters in the corporate virtual-conferencing space.&lt;p&gt;Combine Lync&amp;#x2F;SfB with one of those nice multi-camera units[1] that sit in the middle of the meeting table and provide audio tracking of the speaker (the active camera switches to the person speaking) along with always-on 360 degree video as well - and it&amp;#x27;s the closest you can get to being there.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.polycom.co.uk&amp;#x2F;products-services&amp;#x2F;products-for-microsoft&amp;#x2F;lync-optimized&amp;#x2F;cx5500-unified-conference-station.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.polycom.co.uk&amp;#x2F;products-services&amp;#x2F;products-for-micr...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>Most place I&amp;#x27;ve worked, we&amp;#x27;d waste anywhere from 5-10 minutes at the beginning of every meeting just trying to get A&amp;#x2F;V systems and voice conferencing to work.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Anyone there? Hello? Crap, someone needs to dial in as the host. OK Is everyone dialed in? Good. Oh, wait, Roger can&amp;#x27;t hear us. Roger, dial back in. OK. Hey, whoever is at the cocktail party, can you go on mute?? Thank you. All right. Who&amp;#x27;s projecting? The projector is VGA, does anyone have a laptop with VGA? How about a dongle? Great, we can see it now. Can everyone who&amp;#x27;s remote see the screen sharing? No? OK let&amp;#x27;s restart the screen sharing program. How about now? Shit, we lost Roger again! Why is the screen 640x480? Damnit, can we just use a different laptop? E-mail the presentation to Diane, we can use her laptop. Did Roger dial back in yet??&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s almost universally an awful UX.</text></item><item><author>krashidov</author><text>Enterprise conferencing software is so bad and so expensive I&amp;#x27;m astonished it took this long for a decent competitor to come in. I&amp;#x27;m really surprised Google didn&amp;#x27;t go all in with making Hangouts a decent competitor. I have a feeling this will make a lot of money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>XJOKOLAT</author><text>Barfs.&lt;p&gt;Sorry, Lync&amp;#x2F;Skype for Business has been awful for us.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll be fair and state that I don&amp;#x27;t if it is Microsoft&amp;#x27;s or our tech teams fault.</text></comment>