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Hybrid Meetings by Whereby — Hybrid meetings that just work
Run effortless hybrid meetings with co-location groups [Beta]. No echo, no extra hardware. Just an inclusive, enjoyable experience where your distributed team can make magic happen.
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@mbuckbee glad to hear this will be useful for you! Let us know how it works!
I want to love this, but all the problems you spoke about in the video just aren't problems anymore. This sounds like an advert for Zoom in June 2020. I agree with Zlatko about wanting to back the underdogs, but I just don't see (from the video) what's compelling. Zoom has echo cancelation built in, and most people use Kris[p now anyway.
The sitting in the same room just makes no sense. Before we needed people in the same room for a reason, now we don't. They can be in the same place, and behind a computer.
This just feels a bit like a cure for no disease.
@richmulholland Hi Richard! I totally get that perspective. For what it's worth, what we're doing here is a little different than that--Whereby Colocation Groups do far more than just echo cancellation or noise filtering. With this capability, you can now sit across from your colleagues while joining the same virtual meeting, and leave microphones free/open for every device in the room, allowing both remote and in-person participants to have a natural conversation and not worry about the tech. Even the best echo cancellation and background noise filtering on the market has so far not made an experience like that possible.
@andytyra Hey Andy, I guess I just don't feel that you have solved a problem with this. If I'm speaking to the people in the room, I'm looking way above my webcam and the people online would feel like they were watching other people's conversations from a bad angle. The solve here is to have nobody in the same room, that way everyone is on an equal footing and there are no "second-class citizens".
You guys have solved a minor technical hurdle(most people just mute all but one mic when doing this setup), but you have added a bigger one (a lack of eye contact).
We used to use whereby and we loved it so much. Then they changed rooms to only work if the owner is present. That change killed it for us.
We need company rooms where we can meet without the one admin to be there.
@0xsven Hey Sven! On our business plans, we support the concept of "shared rooms" that allow anyone within your company to act as the room host, and we recently introduced the concept of "flex rooms" on those plans as well that allow you to hold meetings without a registered host. Check out the details on those at these links: https://whereby.helpscoutdocs.co... and https://whereby.helpscoutdocs.co...
@andytyra
We had business accounts but couldnt use whereby anymore when a host was not available. "Shared/Flex rooms" sound exactly like what we were missing. Very happy you brought them back.
Hi Product Hunt 👋
I’m Andreas, Lead Technical Product Manager at Whereby.
Today we’re super excited to release a Beta of Hybrid Meetings to all Whereby Meetings plans.
Our brand new Co-location Groups feature makes setting up a hybrid meeting a breeze: once that's done, co-located folks can sit together in the same meeting room, leave their laptops’ microphones open while talking amongst each other or with remote colleagues, and enjoy really smooth audio and video throughout — it’s almost like everyone is sitting in the same room.
When you experience it, it honestly feels a bit like magic. 🪄
And best of all, the only thing meeting participants need is their own laptop 💻 — no expensive videoconferencing hardware required! Yes, indeed, read on:
🔸 Why did we build this?
At Whereby, we’re trying to create a world where everyone can work from anywhere they like, whether that’s in an office, from their home or even while taking a walk in the park. 🌳
Now, with many companies embracing a hybrid model of working--where employees come into the office only a couple of days per week, and work from home the rest of the time--we’ve heard from many customers stories of the pains of hybrid meetings.
We’ve seen companies spend thousands of dollars on conference room hardware that is overly cumbersome to use, and doesn’t always help: these setups often make remote workers feel excluded from meetings, as they miss out on face-to-face conversations and interactions happening in the room.
And in office settings where there are no fancy conference room setups, folks participating in the same meeting either end up sharing a single laptop, or else, they settle in remote corners or 1-person meeting pods in the same office in order to not get any echo or feedback 🤯
You get the picture: We made it our mission to change that, and make those meetings better and more inclusive 🙌
🔸 How does it work?
At a very basic level, we’re doing three things 3️⃣
- In a group of co-located participants, we only pick up the sound from the microphone with the best position relative to the participant who’s speaking.
- We block co-located participants’ voices from being played back again to them through loudspeakers in their vicinity, eliminating annoying echo and audio feedback.
- We give co-located participants the option to listen to their colleagues' voices using one or all available loudspeakers (e.g. laptop speakers) in the room, depending on what works best for them.
In order to help us assess who is clustered together and who isn’t, we’ve come up with the concept of Co-location Groups 📍, which allow meeting participants to indicate where they are, and who they’re with.
Under the hood, all of this is powered by a combination of technologies:
- Our grid of media routers running on mediasoup, which allows us to selectively send media to exactly the right participants.
- Proprietary audio analysis smarts that help us determine who’s the dominant speaker.
- Our RNNoise-powered noise reduction feature, which allows us to focus on the sounds that matter.
🔸 Today’s release
All that said, today we’re releasing a beta version of hybrid meetings, and we’d love your feedback! Have a play around with your team — you can sign up for free if you don’t already have a Whereby account —, and let us know what you think!
I also want to give a huge shout-out to the entire Whereby team who have worked tirelessly to make this a reality. Thank you all for your hard work, fresh ideas, and dedication!
Happy hybrid meetings! Share your feedback in the comments. 💬
@andreasbovens Such amazing work from the whole team! Absolute game changed of a feature!
@andreasbovens what a product comment, greatly explained and congratulations on this launch, I will try it in the future!
@andreasbovens @andytyra @oyvind_reed Wow, what an incredible mission - trying to make those hybrid meetings better and more inclusive! much appreciated !
@francescod_ales So happy to hear this! We have an incredible team and thanks for your support Francesco.
@francescod_ales looking forward to hearing about your experience with it!
@furkan2606 Thank you for your continued support Furkan. Users like yourself make it all worth it! We appreciate it.
@oyvind_reed and team — big congratulations! I'm co-working a few times per week with the team and I can't wait to try it next time we meet.
Whereby has been my favourite meeting tool for 3 years! Back then, when the product name was appear.in
Love it, and Hybrid meetings will be a very cool feature to test in my team.
Congrats and good luck on lunch Whereby team!
@shalvagegia thank you! Let us know how it works for you! Keen to hear your impressions.
I love whereby! The feature I love the most is the custom link that I have set up. Whenever I want to talk to someone on the team, everyone knows where to come and gather. There's no more "who's going to generate the link for this call".
@adrianthedev So glad it's such a great experience. Let us know how your first hybrid conversation goes!
I've been a fan of whereby for at least a couple of years, I'd do almost anything to not use Zoom! Great to see the platform improving along the way.
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