Setting up online meeting rooms for better participation
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Online (or Remote) Meetings still benefit from good audio and video facilities, and these can be provided by a range of online videoconferencing solutions.
Getting the right kit
These serve to connect people through audio (headsets) and video (webcams), and enable people to talk, and see who is talking, at any particular time.
Good visual and auditory connection can do much to help build and sustain relationships, even at a distance, and so it is important to ensure that the software and hardware utilised is of good quality and fully tested to ensure it does not break down for the numbers of participants involved.
Screen sharing
Videoconferencing solutions also tend to have a screen sharing facility, which enables people to present one of their screens to that other attendees can see what is being shared.
By now, most people will have experienced one or other of these: Lync; Webex; GotoMeeting. Our own preferred solutions are Zoom and Microsoft Teams (which has superceded Lync), both of which have good functionality and are reliable and straightforward to use, but there are many others to choose from. However, in most cases, your videoconference software will have been defined for you by your organisation.
Enabling participation
These videoconferencing tools represent what most people think of as a online meeting, but they are only scratching the surface of what is possible.
To benefit from the full engagement and participation that is possible in online meetings, they need to be augmented by other tools that are also easily available via the internet. See Equipping your Virtual Meeting Room.
Preparing yourself
Whatever your preferred videoconferencing tool, it is important to develop competence and confidence in using its functionality from the outset. This is best done with a group of friends who are all learning to use the tool at the same time.
The stress generated when things go wrong in a high-profile meeting and you don’t know how to fix it is not only very memorable, it can also damage your credibility, your career, and your confidence to continue to try different things.
Preparing the technology
It is also important to ensure that your videoconferencing tool is capable of doing what you want it to do:
- Handling the number of participants required, for the time periods required
- Working with the other tools you are planning to use (usually via screen sharing)
- Providing sufficient functionality for you to take control when you need to, or to pass control over, or mute out distracting noise
- Enabling you to set up any preparation within the meeting (although this is often best done by means of a whiteboard tool)
Preparing your attendees
And it is also important that your participants are capable of doing what they need to do. To err is human, but to really mess things up you need a computer, and sadly technology is now so complex it rarely works exactly the same way for everyone, even within the same organisation.
Participants really need to know that they can log into the tool, that they can see, speak and hear, and that they can do the basics without disrupting or delaying others.
Ideally this can be by means of a trial run or, failing that, by means of having everyone log on 15 minutes early to see a screen (which you can present via PowerPoint) covering the basics. This will minimise the impact of things going wrong, but you will likely still encounter people who attempt to join at the last minute and find that they don’t really know how. (They are likely the same people who also disrupt your physical meetings).
Preparing the content
Videoconferencing tools often have the facility to pre-load presentations and web pages and, if you can, it is well worth setting up what you can beforehand.
However, presentations often prove less engaging over the web than they do in a physical meeting, particularly within the technical restrictions of videoconferencing software alone. We would therefore recommend that you consider using a whiteboard tool to actively engage people in the content to be covered.