First of all, you need to understand what is primarily important for you in the organization of a video call, and therefore give a few recommendations, which can be summarized in several basic principles:
- you must be heard well;
- you must be able to be heard well by others;
- The time of the rally should not be spent on preparation and checking the connection, it should be done in advance;
- The airwaves should be as clear as possible, with no background noise;
- The culture of the rally is even more important online than offline.
Following these principles will help you conduct rallies as comfortably and efficiently as possible.
Technical support
Regardless of the type of re-meeting, technical support is crucial. Experience shows that you should pay attention to such moments:
- The facilitator, or the person in charge of technical support, should come to the meeting room 10-15 minutes before the start of the meeting, check the equipment and how it works in conjunction with the chosen system for conference communication (Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, etc.). If this is the first time you are using equipment or a meeting room, you have a very important meeting coming up or you have never communicated with any of the locations before, it makes sense to check it at least one day in advance – this will give you a chance to eliminate technical deficiencies or come up with a “plan B”.
- If anyone is planning to demonstrate something on the screen (presentation, diagrams, etc.), you should check the demonstration mode as well. It is important to remember that not only the people in your location should see your presentation, but also everyone else (it often happens that the demonstrator simply connects to the monitor in the meeting room, instead of using the screen display in the conference communication system – you cannot do this).
- Speak only into the microphone. If it’s a tawnhall, and you have time for questions from the audience – take care to find a separate microphone that participants will pass to each other while asking questions – otherwise questions will only be heard in the “central” location, while everyone else can only guess at what’s being said.
- Use quality microphones in the meeting rooms – so that all participants, even from a far corner, can be heard. Using an external laptop microphone is not an option in most cases, as they have a narrow beam pattern and are only suitable for 1-1 meetings. For larger audiences, you need to use separate microphones plugged into laptops (like Jabra).
- If you plan to draw something on the board, take care to have a camera that looks at the board and the picture from which will be visible to all remote participants (you can take a separate laptop and put it so that the camera “looks” at the board).
- If everyone is working from home and there is no whiteboard, you can draw something in a notebook and show it to the camera.
- Remote participants connected from workstations should have headsets with microphones attached directly to the tripod attached to the headset – this is the only way others will hear the participant exclusively, without background noise from the room where he/she is. If you use headsets with a microphone placed on a wire or built-in headphones, the others will hear everything that happens in the background, plus the sound of the microphone rubbing against the participant’s clothes. Headsets are a separate topic. Many companies in the pursuit of cheapness buy employees headset microphones that leave much to be desired – they miss the background noise, distort the sound, etc.
- The use of an external laptop microphone by a remote participant is possible only if he is alone in the room and it is very quiet, and in addition, the microphone is of high quality and allows you to make out the speech of the person. In other cases – only headset.
Holding a rally
All the same rules apply to a remote meeting as to a usual meeting: the purpose of the meeting, participants’ agendas and objectives should be clearly defined, the results of the meeting should be well documented, the facilitator should have appropriate skills, etc.
Regarding the specifics of remote rallies, the following should be kept in mind:
- At the beginning of the rally, you should ask the remote participants if they can hear you well, and also check if you can hear them well yourself. Similarly, ask them if they can see the material you are showing.
- When discussing a topic, prioritize remote participants by involving them in the conversation, as they often find it more difficult to fit into the dialogue and ask questions/explain themselves in a timely manner.
- Make sure that the discussion does not turn into a “blackboard conversation” with only one or two colleagues – in this case you lose both remote participants and those in the room. In addition, with such a development, the discussants can easily block the view of the camera aimed at the board.
- For visualization of textual information it is better to use means of collective editing of documents (e.g. Google Docs) and displaying the screen: the picture is clearer than on the board, and besides, participants can edit the document together.
- Those who are not currently speaking should turn off the microphone to avoid background noise (keyboard noise, peers’ voices) getting into the general airwaves.
- Not all participants will be ready to turn on the camera – some are dressed in home clothes, some have a mess in their apartment, some just don’t like the camera. In this case, do not force people to turn on the video – the rally should be comfortable for everyone.
Tips for the rally participant
If you are not organizing a rally, but just participating in it, you also need to keep in mind some rules:
- If you can use a headset, use one. If you can’t – order one from an online store. From my own experience, I can say that a headset is the best option for distributed meetings – you will be heard clearly and distinctly, and background noise will not interfere as much. There are great wireless headsets that will allow you to walk around the room while providing great sound quality for your interlocutors.
- If you don’t have a headset, check your laptop’s external microphone – make a test call via Skype or with a colleague. If you can be heard clearly enough, you can use an external microphone. But remember – many external microphones have a very narrow focus range: they are geared to what a person says “directly into the laptop,” and as soon as you turn your head slightly, or want to twirl in a chair, you immediately become hard to hear.
- If you don’t have a headset, and the external microphone doesn’t work well, you probably have a headset for your phone – use it. It’s better than nothing.
- About background noise. There shouldn’t be any. Do everything you can to minimize them (close the window and door to the room, turn off background music, find the quietest room in the house, banish the cat) – so you show respect to your colleagues.
- Another type of background noise, not always obvious, occurs when a person unknowingly rubs the microphone on a headset wire or wipes the surface of a laptop when using an external microphone – don’t do that.
- Turn off the microphone as soon as you’re done talking. That way you spare your colleagues the sound of your heavy Darth Vader-style breathing. Also, if you have to type something on the keyboard during a rally, turn off the microphone.
- Don’t chew while you’re talking. It prevents you from pronouncing words clearly and is simply unpleasant for those around you.
- Do not interrupt your colleagues. Even the offline meeting becomes unbearable when several people speak at the same time. As for online, it’s generally unacceptable.
- Remember that sometimes there can be a delay on the line – then people may think that they are interrupted. In that case, hold a short pause before you start your remark – so you can make sure that the person has finished speaking. In general, it is worth looking at how the video games in online casinos, for example in a live game, when the presenter has the skill to conduct a dialogue on the air with the players, as he holds a pause and divides the speech of the players.
- If bandwidth permits, use video so you can convey non-verbal cues to your interlocutors, making the meeting format as close to offline as possible.
- Connect to the meeting about three minutes before it starts – this allows you to check all the settings.
Choosing a conferencing system
Systems for organizing remote meetings now more than enough. They differ in the quality of sound and picture transmission, the ability to record the meeting, the maximum number of participants, convenience, etc. In addition, the choice may be influenced by internal security policies of the company.
Zoom is definitely the best system, in my opinion. It has paid and free (with rallies limited to 40 minutes) subscription plans, allows you to record rallies in the cloud and on local disk, great video and audio, even with a weak connection.
Google Meet – more demanding to the channel, but convenient because it is available to everyone who has a Google account (both personal and business version). Recording rallings is only possible in one of the paid options (the most expensive).
GoToMeeting is a rather old product, has almost all the features of the previous two systems, but sometimes has problems with the quality of sound and video transmission. Also, less convenient in terms of user interface.
Skype – not really a conferencing system, but it does allow you to create group calls and show the screen. In my personal experience has shown the worst results on weak links, but can be used for remote
