 Last week a friend told me a story that quickly spread throughout her global company. A number of executives were on a Zoom call. One woman on the call was likely unwinding from another stressful week. She had recently written a speech for their company president's televised meeting with President Trump. She had a very short timeline with frequent revisions. Everyone was, of course, joining the meeting from their homes. With so many people new to this technology, I suppose this has played out multiple times in various settings. A short while into the call, a fellow executive sent her a private text message that her camera was on and if left on, she should likely be wearing more than just her underwear. Separately, perhaps you saw SNL this past weekend, finally back from the video hiatus so many programs have been on. On the show, the woman takes her camera to the bathroom as her co-workers look on in horror and try to stop her from creating a visual they won't be able to unsee. As the organizer of your meeting, you're unlikely to make that kind of mistake. But its hard to predict when you might need to be on a call, large or small, and need to be at your best. Some meetings carry more gravity than others. There are plenty of lurking surprises that you can avoid by being prepared. This can include video call coaching. "Just dive in and make mistakes," is one line of thinking I've heard about doing online meetings and events. This can be good advice, depending on the situation. Consider this scenario… You spend hours putting together an event. You have the date and time finally agreed to. You've set up the Zoom meeting and sent out the invitations. You have a good response from people anxious to participate. They are supportive, but also busy. It's your time to shine. You've rehearsed the event. You've timed out all of the segments and related graphics. You've taken steps to facilitate feedback via the chat and devised a way to monitor incoming comments and incorporate them into the event. After all of that preparation and planning, you overlooked one detail and suddenly you have no audio. Or, you've recording the audio to post the event for others to watch, but it is distorted and fuzzy and impossible to listen to. And now it can't be recreated. The moment has passed. In over 30 years of production, I've seen just about every mistake one can make - so you don't have to. Fortunately, I've avoided streaming from the toilet or meeting in my underwear…that I know of. Set up a free consultation to get checked out on the DynacomTV Webinar Cookbook (https://www.dynacomtv.com/calendar.html)
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