Is it "your" meeting or are you just "in" the meeting?
I'd say try skyping it and if there's a problem go back to hitting the road.
For the most part, I'm just "in" the meeting. If I could remotely do music rehearsals... well... my groups would probably sound really sh*tty.
I work with people virtually all the time. Often it's actually more productive. I'd say give it a try. Maybe you can start with every other meeting or whatever works.
How frequent are these meetings anyway and how long do they typically last? How many participants and is there a good speakerphone at the meeting site?
The average meeting appears to last about two hours and have 5-6 people total, though the committee meeting I attended tonight had 9 show up. They do have speakerphones in the building.
It's not so much an "every staff meeting" thing (which are weekly) as much as certain committee meetings that occur outside my regular work schedule on a night or day I would not otherwise be there. (Once or twice a month.) Today, for instance, I played a funeral in the morning and had a 7-hour gap from the end of the funeral to tonight's committee meeting. (I'm usually there Wednesdays and Sundays.) I drove back, worked on things at home, and went back. There have also been other days I have loaded up my trunk and carted as much as I could in there and basically camped out. (I don't recommend practicing piano in a cold sanctuary, BTW.) I'll consider it a success if it allows me to keep the physically-present schedule consolidated to just those two days. It also gives me another option if the winter weather or my father's health become an issue on a day of a normal staff meeting. There are times I can REALLY use that 2 hours of commute time.
But how much is there really to talk about?
During these staff/committee meetings? Usually... NOTHING!!!!
Wait... you mean about teleconferencing... Honestly, maybe I just thought it was this boogeyman that I barely looked at before. I do have a couple of friends that use Skype, so I'll check into it.
Or I suppose I could just call in and ask them to turn on the speakerphone. (Curtis... Your "new" superpower is the ability to reduce all but the most stubborn of men to embarrassed silence by pointing out most obvious, yet last thought-of solution.)
