Hangouts on Google+

When I took a good look at Google+, one of the things that immediately came to mind was that it had potential for online committee meetings.
Thus, I invited the other founder-members  of what will eventually be the British Dupuytren Society to give it a test-drive.

It went well. Firstly, the others found it reasonably simple to join Google+ and add each other to our circles.

On Wednesday, we agreed a time. H logged on first and started a hangout for his Dupuytren circle and A  and I saw the Hangout invitation when we looked at our G+ pages.

My bottom of the range webcam, purchased a few days ago, worked perfectly.

We were able to talk to one another while viewing and editing our proposed constitution in Google Documents.

A few minor snags - not everyone was using a headset and this did cause some feedback on the sound. Hopefully we'll have that fixed by our next meeting.

My computer started to overheat towards the end of the session and the fan got very noisy.  I have a fairly old machine and running live video both in and out pushed it to its limits.  Next time,  I'll see if muting the video reduces the loading.

However, overall I was very impressed with the way the system worked.  I think it may prove a god send to convention committees.

If anyone wants inviting to Google+, just ask (though I think most of you are already there now).