Are you feeling Zoom fatigue? Well, this new alleged Zoom killer could make things so much better. Or worse.
I couldn’t help feeling excited.
My email inbox was adorned with the headline: “Zoom Killer Launches.”
Yes, it was written by a PR person, but I know several real people who would gladly see Zoom be melted down by a humanoid Robocop of sanity. Not because they loathe Zoom, you understand, but because they’re forced to be on it all the time.
So my innards palpitated at how this alleged Zoom killer solved the problem.
I began to read the email: “Vowel is not just another Zoom-like video conferencing solution where people simply put a face to a voice call.”
A thousand hosannas. A million Hail Marys. This is a breakthrough. Wait? Vowel? It’s called Vowel? Like bowel but with a V? Rhymes with “foul”?
“What are you doing today?”
“I’m Voweling with my doctor.”
If you get cut off, will it be a disemvoweling?
I eagerly read on. “Vowel is more like a Slack where users/teams ‘live’ and can pre-plan, host, record, transcribe meetings.”
If there’s one thing that so many have wished for over the last few months, it’s that Zoom would be more like Slack.
Slack, after all, has filled the world with the joys of, well, endless Slack messages that seem to drag the mind toward an infinite loop of corporate and corporeal misery.
You live on Slack. You live with Slack. Your brain goes slack.
But wait, I’m being uncharacteristically unkind. Vowel is like a video conference with the minutes being generated before your eyes for permanent reference. Or, as Vowel puts it, the service “acts a repository for all meeting info so it’s fully searchable post-meeting, whether you attended the meeting or not.”
Of course, you could just ask someone what happened in the meeting, but where’s the fun in that when you can search endlessly for the one snippet that will change your day?
Perhaps, though, you’ve been disturbed this week by news of a TV personality who seemed to believe you can be on a Zoom meeting and simply mute it to become invisible.
Helpfully, a Vowel video offers a solution: “Sensitive subject? Anyone on the call can pause recording at any time.”
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