What is Vowel Video Conferencing

Vowel takes video meetings to the next level. All the information related to meetings are now searchable and actionable. Its key features are automated transcripts of the conversation, collaboration on notes, bookmark hashtags, creating real time action items on the same screen.

Think of it as the Slack for Video Conferencing, Vowel can become a real alternative for remote teams around the world. Engineers and designers will be able to take full advantage of its features from product research analysis to architecture discussions, making it easier for teams to sync their goals. Vowel is compatible with PC, Macs, IOS and Android.

About Vowel Video Conferencing

Vowel Video Conferencing launches today, with announced funding of $4.3 million, coming from BoxGroup Ventures LLC, Amity Ventures LLC, Company Ventures, and the co-founder of Twitch, Kevin Lin.

The primary goal behind Vowel Video Conferencing is to provide a powerful platform for online video meetings that offers a wide variety of organizational options and collaboration tools to make working remotely on a team project as easy and obstacle-free as possible. 

Should this project take off and achieve the goals set by its creators, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that it would compete with now established similar virtual collaboration and conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

Vowel Video Conferencing Key Features

Actionable Items

A big highlight of Vowel Video Conferencing is the implementation of action items that can be added to a conference meeting and linked to sharable and searchable meeting records. This allows everyone to keep up with what’s going on in the meeting and highlights important points that may otherwise become lost to some of the participants.

Automated transcription

By implementing the Google Transcribe technology, Vowel is able to offer vocal transcription, turning spoken words into text that can be accessed at any time from all participants (see actionable items above). 

Vowel can accurately identify multiple speakers at the same time and transcribe what they are saying even during those heated conversations when everybody is talking over one another. This helps keep important pieces of information accessible from anyone so that no information is lost and one can always go back to what was previously said for reference or a reminder.

Furthermore, the automated transcription allows the whole meeting to be turned into a media library that stays there and can be used in real time for the completion of the project without need to look for the required information elsewhere.

There, however, are certain problems and limitations with this feature that may make it less than impressive to certain teams. Voice-recognition and transcription, overall, is still far from perfect, especially when the speakers have a strong accent and/or English is not their native language. To add to that, it is unrealistic to expect quality transcriptions for any other languages in the near future, so Vowel’s automated transcription feature will be limited to only English-speaking teams for the time being.

Still, it is a cool idea and if it delivers on its promises in the future, there could be some real potential there.

Integration

Vowel, itself, is also very easily accessible – you can start it from different Google apps or Slack. It can also be integrated into Figma, Krisp, Mmhmm, and others so, whatever other app or platform you are used to, you chances are you should be able to seamlessly integrate Vowel with it.

Security

Zoom had an abominable amount of security issues that left its reputation tarnished. In comparison, Vowel maintains its own security with state-of-the-art encryption, building upon Google authentication to control access and prevent unwanted attendees from dropping in as well.

Vowel Stock

Considering it just got 4.3 million dollars in seed funding the company will have to expand exponentially before it starts publicly trading on the stock market. Zoom investors should keep a close eye on Vowel.

What we think about Vowel

Time will tell how useful Vowel will be. Migrating whole teams from one platform to another will happen only if Vowel does deliver true value. The whole app is based on a key feature that is yet to be fully optimized. Auto transcripts are still far from perfect and having team members that speak English as a second language could be one reason why people don’t find it useful. Support for other languages will also be an important cornerstone for Vowel. 

Most of the meetings I do are not planned out word for word which then makes you ask the question “Do I really need a transcript of my conversation?”. I do, however, find it useful for UX cases, when I have interviews with clients and then want to convey that data to my team to create the best solutions for the product. Vowel has the potential to be a true alternative to Zoom Meetings. 

Finally, in this day and age of social distancing and anti-pandemic measures, when we all must take responsibility and try, to the best of our abilities, to limit our interactions with other, platforms such as Vowel Video Conferencing become a great alternative that keeps a team working together, even when physically apart. Our team will certainly keep a close eye on how Vowel Video Conferencing is coming together as its potential is there and should not be overlooked.

Vowel Video Conferencing for Mac

Vowel supports current and older version of MacOS. No major issues have been reported at the time being. Make sure you download the app from the official website.