How to Present and Act in Virtual Meetings

Here is a must-read article in today’s New York Times by Eilene Zimmerman.  It touches on several common questions about how to behave in virtual meetings which I haven’t covered here.  (I’ll be honest: I didn’t think of them.)  Although it touches briefly on advice for presenters, it mostly focuses on the participants.  I’d like to begin by expanding on the presentation side, and then end by paraphrasing and putting my spin on the remaining advice from the Times article.

First, and from the article:  Use shorter presentations.  It’s much easier to lose people’s attention, their engagement, via video.  If you notice that you are losing them, address them directly.  The example in the Times article is “Debbie, you look a little puzzled. Can I clarify?”  Call on people.  Engage them directly.  This may require a certain level of planning ahead (“At this point, I’ll ask Bob because that’s his specialty.”).

This area, keeping the presentations shorter and more participatory, is an area I need more work on.  It can be very difficult to change presentation styles, and it’s in some ways much more nerve-wracking to present remotely than with everyone in the same room.  The delay, the lack of visual cues, and the likelihood that someone was checking their email RIGHT when the information they wanted was presented will all conspire to make you believe your presentation is dying even if everyone is actually quite impressed.  Even so, having a shorter, interactive meeting will help prevent that email from being checked…till the meeting’s over, that is.

I also recommend, in the spirit of interactivity, to use the collaborative tools offered by most video conferencing solutions to turn presentations into demos.  Adding a demonstration to your slide show is much more engaging, and with most meeting tools you can even ask participants to perform certain actions to move the presentation along.  In addition, use movies produced especially for your presentation.

Essentially, the best video conferencing presentations need to be created with an eye to the benefits of using the computer-moderated medium rather than trying to imitate the presentations made face-to-face.

Now back to the participants.  As mentioned earlier, this is paraphrased (and liberally reinterpreted) from the “Staying Professional in Virtual Meetings” article from the New York Times.

Show up mentally as well as physically.  There’s a lot to be said here.  This may sound stupid, but it’s really quite easy to forget to pay attention.  Especially for longer meetings.

I thought this was great advice:  Depending on expected participation, multitask or don’t, but stay business–no grooming!

Pay attention.  This goes back to showing up mentally.  If you require too much clarification, it may come off as having checked out.

Use mute.  Seriously.  There are many reasons to do this.  On the technical side it will help save bandwidth, making conferences much more reliable if some participants are on bad networks.  BUT, what if everyone is on a fast network?  Why would you need mute then?  OTHER NOISES.  I love the following example in the article:  Someone was eating potato chips during a big meeting, and the mic was picking up everything.  For me, I have a newborn.  I’d rather not have you hear her if I’m conferencing from my home office.

Cue.  This one is easy to miss, but obvious once you think about it.  There will always be some level of delay.  This means missed cues, people talking over each other, etc.  The easiest way to overcome this is simply to either raise your hand, interject in a chat or similar, or even say, “excuse me” or “question.”

No stripes.  I laughed at this.  Very basic, but very important.  Don’t wear stripes, polka dots, or–hoo boy–plaid.  It eats up both processing power and bandwidth requirements to collect and send all that color and pattern info…especially if you’re moving around.  So please stick to solid colors.

Finally, to stand out, actively engage.  Despite the strong advice to use mute, don’t then sit on the sidelines.   If there’s something that needs bringing up, bring it up.