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Some tips to optimize your video conferencing meetings
Feverish and phlegmatic, dense and empty, slow and quick: managing our tasks is now a real challenge. Time perception has become blurred and the rhythm of our daily life is completely disrupted.
In our previous articles we offered some tips to ease the transition to smartwork.
Here we collect some good practices to optimize video conference meetings. These tips are based on our personal experience: feel free to complete them and post your comments and ideas!
1. Set date, time and duration of your meeting. Try to accommodate everyone's requirements and be flexible.
2. Browse through the available offer and choose the right platform for your requirements. Skype can work for small groups; Zoom for meetings of less than 40 minutes (no charge), unlimited if you have a subscription or if your university makes it available; Jitsi is a free, open source solution.
3. A few days in advance provide everyone with the link for the videoconference (e.g. via email, via Google Calendar or any other platform).
4. For a professional meeting, remember to be... professional :
- Test your microphone, camera and connection before the meeting;
- Dress as you would for work;
- Position yourself so that you are well-lit, avoiding if possible to give your back to a light source (window...);
- Put the camera at your eye level;
- Keep a reasonable distance from the camera (avoid close-ups or being too far away).
- Behave as you would in a real meeting
5. Now more than ever it is necessary to be on time with respect for other people's time and activities.
6. Share the agenda in advance: it must be clear and concise.
7. If you have documents to share, send them as much as possible in advance; you can present them in screen sharing, but it will be more effective if your colleagues could consult them beforehand.
8. At the end of the meeting, list the points and the proposed solutions. This will make you more efficient.
9. Last but not least: we are living a very special circumstance. We all need sharing, empathy and warmth: make time for informal exchanges and fun.
