Lessons
Lesson Info
Conference and Video Calls
This slide used to be called, Conference Call Etiquette. Now, I think of it as conference and video call with more and more remote working with the ubiquity of platforms like Zoom. With the common use of video chat and apps that are used for project management like Slack. More and more people are working remotely and interacting through conference and video calls. There's a set of courtesies that involve being aware head of time. That you plan, that you get to know your technologies, that you practice with it. That you think about background noises and visuals. That you're on time. That you silence other devices that could bother or interrupt you or the people that you're meeting with. During the call. There's another set of courtesies that start to apply. It's easy to talk over people, to lose thread in a conversation. Wait for people to finish. Introduce yourself. When you talk or when you start talking if someone can't see you. Be careful with those background noises or sounds. The ...
basic courtesy here is one of letting people know who's participating. So, if there's a live camera in a room or a live microphone, you want to be sure everybody in the room knows it. You also want to know, you also want to let people know who they're being broadcast to. So, when I pick up the phone in my car, a place where many people use a hands-free phone or speakerphone, I tell the person who's calling who I'm sitting with. Hi, Mom. I'm here with Puja and Aneshia. Oh, okay, I'm not going to jump into talking about the surprise party I'm planning for Puja next week. Our phones identify us to each other. So, we think we know who were talking to. If it's not that person, if there are other people involved let someone know. These are places where the speaker phone and conference call courtesies start to impact our personal lives. But they're particularly important in business environments. Live microphones, live cameras, and you want to let people know if someone's being broadcast to someone who they might not think they're talking to or be seen by. That is a rocket ship version of the etiquette for conference and video calls. But I think it's a good picture, it's a good umbrella idea of how to show courtesy when you're using those particular types of communication.