Some people find that it’s more difficult to get engagement in larger groups of people when they’re not physically together. Personally, I don’t find this. I think it’s mostly a question of having energy in running the meeting; that’s important in keeping people engaged. Also, realistically, there are meetings where not everyone has to be engaged all the time; you just want them there so you can ask specific questions when they come up, and you’re perfectly happy if they’re multitasking and doing other work the rest of the time. For this to work, it’s important only to use audio+screensharing. As soon as you can see a bunch of people not paying attention, it’s fairly deadly 🙂

I myself don’t have trouble with this, but definitely other people can get distracted by things that are going on around them. When I’m in meetings with people and they have “audio distractions” it’s sometimes annoying, but sometimes it’s just amusing. Like our long-term employee who has a cockatiel who can sometimes be heard in the background … and I’m just waiting for when it contributes verbally to the meeting 🙂