About me: consultant & trainer that does a lot of remote & in-person training. I'm flying cross-country at the moment (literally, typing this in a plane) to meet with a group of people for that exact reason - they need to rapidly cover a lot of topics. It's worth tens of thousands of dollars to them to get everybody in a room to get that high resolution level of detail & cooperation.<p>In person, I can see very high resolution details of dozens of people in a meeting at once, and see at a glance who agrees, disagrees, or isn't following along at all. Typical example: 15-20 people will be discussing a very tough architectural decision that will affect a company for years to come. We all need to see each other clearly and pick up on non-verbal cues that folks might have an objection, but be hesitant to say it out loud. (Or just might not really buy into something, but be just going along to save face.)<p>Remotely, especially when people are in a mix of remote & in-person in conference rooms, I can't get enough pixels of detail to determine that information.
my take for one-on-one video calls is that they're hard because you have to constantly be attentive to the other person, and it seems rude to look away or do anything else, whereas in in-person conversations it's actually more possible to look in other directions and still be present. I'm not sure that applies for larger conferences, though.