Video Meetings: Their Impact and Benefits for Organizations and Individuals

Social distancing and staying at home imposed a great impact on the way we communicate with one another. The nature of gatherings changed, personal visits stopped, and communication became mostly digital, especially with the vast majority committing to staying at home and studying and working from home. Our old habit faced a new challenge, namely adapting to social distancing. But, as usual, technology comes to provide help and serve humanity, and this time video chats, calls, and meetings were the opportunity that reduced the sense of isolation for those who use these video technologies, whether to communicate with family or regarding work.

The percentage of feeling truly connected

522 people participated in a poll on Twitter, among those who use video technologies to communicate between employees, family, and friends, and they were asked to vote on their satisfaction with using these technologies. The opinions of the majority of them were positive, and they said it gives them a sense of happiness and compensation for being present. 19% of them expressed satisfaction at a rate of 30 to 50%, while 17% of them reported a satisfaction rate reaching from 50% to 70%, and 18% of them chose a high satisfaction rate reaching 70%. As for the others in the vote, who amount to 46%, their satisfaction rate was less than 20%.

Varied uses

There is no doubt that, with the opening of the way for such technologies, they have proven to be a necessity for everyone, for the various benefits and advantages they hold, such as holding meetings between officials and employees, following up on lectures and video lessons, distance education, attending seminars and exercises remotely, as well as creating a smart work environment capable of remote work, as is the case now for the vast majority, and creating new jobs in the labor market such as call centers (from home), and much more of the positives that are difficult to gather in entire pages.

The inevitable development of technologies

Humanity is naturally disposed to development, searching for solutions, and striving toward the better, and we in the United Arab Emirates possess the challenge and the will, and our goal is always to be at the forefront and number one, thanks to the ambition and directives of our wise leadership and their continuous support in various fields.

Among the most important keys to the forefront are video communications, which open horizons that were closed to us, and which have now become part of our daily moments at work, with family and friends, in self-development, continuous learning, and skill development. In a beautiful reference to what members of WhatsApp groups do for many people, namely the near-daily, weekly, and monthly video meetings using other applications among the group's members on a continuous basis.

The renaissance of applications and transformation

There is no doubt that many for whom this technology did not appeal had their own reasons, and many of them did not use these technologies at all, or do not know how it is done, because most of the available applications are aimed at business in general. As for the easy applications, some of them, indeed the most important of them, are still closed, such as Apple FaceTime, Google Duo, WhatsApp, and others. As for business applications, due to tens of millions entering them in less than a week, they had no choice but to develop their applications quickly, cover every shortcoming and security vulnerability, and add feature after feature, and fierce competition began among them, copying features, developing performance, and easing usage. Even Google awoke from its coma and began developing its Hangouts application, but it changed its name to Google Meet, to show the world that this application belongs to it.

The widespread and used applications

In another vote on my Twitter account for users of these applications, in which 702 people participated, and the question was specifically which applications you use to talk with your family and friends these days, the surprise was as follows: 10% of them expressed that they use Microsoft Teams, 24% use Zoom, and 5% use Google Hangouts, while the rest, amounting to 62%, expressed that they do not use video chat applications for one reason or another. Other tweeters shared names of other applications they use, such as ToTok and Skype.

The abundance of gossip about Zoom

There has been much talk recently about Zoom and the extent of the breaches and security weakness, but most of these observations have been contained and protection doubled. For your information, there is no system or application that is 100% secure, ever, for security vulnerabilities exist in every application, and the most important point is the extent of the company's speed and responsiveness in updating and developing, and this is what we have felt with Zoom, the pioneer in this field.

A desire, a need, and a plea

In the end, service providers must provide packages that serve this type of communication, develop systems in cooperation with major companies, and use open-source protocols and applications to provide similar solutions, indeed better than the existing ones and competitive, so that we have self-sufficiency in services.