Data Backdrop Greeting Options

A dozen or so years back, I was gigging at a global outfit. Internally, calling themselves a kind of worldwide tech plumbers. Which I quite liked as a label. Yet the marketing bods didn't. To their loss.

Given the planetary span, on occasion I'd be involved at all hours for a videolink with one or more from far flung corners.

Cisco Disco, is what I'd come to call them. As they supplied the (magnificent) Telepresence system.

Your co-participants would be on big screens we then termed 'plasmas'. At the time larger than consumer versions.

Mostly, I cottoned on we were really using that leading-edge video tech as mere substitute for a telephone conference call. The very fact we could see each other a bonus. But get-togethers flowed as on voice-only.

Every now again, someone would replace themselves with a presentation slide. Talking us through it.

Or send email alongside, typically with some data lifted from a spreadsheet, for us all to read whilst on-call.

Sound familiar?

Almost all calls today on whatever you use as your 'zoom' of choice run pretty much the same. Even though we've all had around a couple of years of enforced use to evolve. From which the vast majority have declined to partake in efforts to move this thing forward.

The rigs were mainly in purpose-crafted studios. The tech taking up most of the room. With three seats in a slight curve around a trio of screens. you squashed up against a bare back wall.

The odd one or two were in personal offices. Yet the placement of big screen always a compromised afterthought.

I was having none of this.

In one location, I could physically move the screen myself. In others, I managed to persuade a forward-thinking screwdriver to change the wall-mount to one that swivelled a touch. In both cases, so the room whiteboard could now be brought into play.

With the more formal studio set, depending on what space allowed, I'd either bring in a flip chart easel, or - my preferred option - put up with sticky tack a few plain sheets of such large scale pages.

Being the days before being able to use a drawing tablet, I'd still have my own clipboard to scribble on and show to the camera. I noted how others began to do the same.

My favourite though, was to show some prep.

When knowing what we might talk about, I'd write up beforehand on the sheets stuck on the wall behind me. Ensuring they were in good vision.

Phrases. Numbers. Diagrams. Charts. Maps.

All in simplified form. Each larger than normally might get written. Different colour pens used too.

Today, I still use this technique.

Albeit less with physical paper. My preferred lab readily allows for muralling.

If you've a decent-sized whiteboard at your disposal, consider buying some thicker-nibbed markers. Try different lighting options so that bleach-spots and glare off it is diminished. And check for optimal webcam positioning so your audience can actually see your written wisdom.

Prep has quite the beneficial effect.

Your fellow attendees realise you've done some for a start. That likely puts you ahead of ninety percent of other video-callers, hey.

It let's you shape the flow of the resultant conversation. Preparation being nine-tenths of the battle and the like.

You can annotate. Thereby creating a mode of collaboration of a type which attendees may appreciate and find refreshingly unusual.

I've had it where some of your 'blocks' of info go unmentioned. Afterwards, leading to some attendee to engage still further (often as a final person too leave the call) by wanting to ask what they meant. A great buying signal.

The pic to which I link up-top reminded me of all this today.

He's apparently into quantum computing. Warning against the 'underestimation' of just how much more money and consequently how far that dastardly jackbooting China regime are ahead in this game-changing field over the freedom-loving West.

It's a PR shot. Not necessarily a video call backdrop. Yet it could be. It should be. For us. Adapting as we go.