In this article
A live call has a second channel running alongside the audio: a drawer of written comments, and reactions that float up the screen. Neither of them interrupts anybody, which is precisely what makes them useful.
Most of what goes wrong in a room with more than six people in it is fixed here rather than in the audio.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Respond without taking the floor.
- check_circle Use the hand queue instead of unmuting.
- check_circle Run the back channel as a host.
- check_circle Set the convention that makes a large room work.
Everything here happens without a microphone opening, which is the entire design.
graphic_eq Silence in a voice room is ambiguous
Anybody who has spoken into a call with thirty muted people knows the problem. There is no way to tell whether the point landed, whether the audio is working, or whether anybody is still there. The speaker starts repeating themselves, or talking faster, and both of those make it worse.
Reactions solve that specific problem and they are worth using generously for it. A handful of them while somebody is mid-sentence is not noise — it is the only evidence they get that the room exists, and it costs the room nothing because nothing was interrupted.
The written drawer does the other half. Links, spellings, names, numbers and the question somebody will ask in ten minutes all belong there, because they are the things speech is worst at and text is best at.
Four positions in the same room
The back channel is a different instrument depending on where you are sitting.
headphones Where most people are, most of the time
record_voice_over You cannot read and talk at the same time
pan_tool The queue is the job
groups When the drawer scrolls faster than anyone reads
The audio is for one person at a time. Everything the rest of the room needs to say goes here.
alt_route What belongs in the drawer and what does not
The back channel inherits a problem from every meeting that has ever had one: it is easier to type than to speak, so it fills with things that should have been said aloud. A room where the interesting discussion happens in text while somebody talks over it has quietly split into two events, and the people on a phone are only at one of them.
A useful line to hold: the drawer is for things that are better written — a link, a correction, a question waiting its turn — and for reactions. Anything that is a contribution to the discussion belongs in the queue, even though the queue is slower. The slowness is the point; it is what keeps one conversation in the room.
settings Using the back channel
- Open the drawer from the call screen It sits alongside the audio.
- React while somebody is speaking Silence tells them nothing.
- Type the link, the spelling, the number Speech is bad at those.
- Raise a hand instead of unmuting A request rather than an interruption.
- Hosts: say the convention first Thirty seconds, once.
- Do not host and speak Hand the queue to somebody else.
This page is what happens beside the audio. The curriculum step is the audio itself: opening a room, managing who can speak, and what running a session for a large audience actually involves.
At a glance
- 1Back channel
React and comment during a call without taking the floor.
- 2Raise your hand
Request to speak instead of unmuting.
- 3Host conventions
Set the rules in the first minute.
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