Conducting effective Zoom and WebRTC meetings

Master the art of effective WebRTC and Zoom meetings and boost your remote communication. Get practical tips and techniques for productive virtual meetings.

Everyone is talking about RTO (return-to-office), so what better time is there than this to talk about remote meetings and how to conduct them more effectively? For the purpose of SEO, this is titled effective Zoom meetings, but frankly? It is the same best practices I’d give for any WebRTC meeting.

Brave (new?) world of remote meetings

This is usually a blog for creators of products and services around WebRTC and communication technology, so writing something for end users is rather new to me. That said, like everyone else I do a lot of remote meetings, and most of my career revolved around video conferencing technologies.

I follow a great Hebrew podcast about sales and marketing. In a recent episode they discussed Zoom sales meetings (you can find it here, if your Hebrew is up for it). So I took it as a signal that it was time for me to dive into this topic and write about it as well. I’ve incorporated a lot of their suggestions here, and added a few of my own.

Fix your hair

Some things don’t change between in person and remote meetings. In both, you need to look your best.

Since what you see in a video meeting is the head, make sure that your hair is presentable.

While at it, check if you need to shave…

👉 For me this is a real issue. I never combed or fixed my hair in any way. Not when going to work physically and not when working from home. That has been true for all of my adult life. I don’t own or use a comb… so fixing my hair for me is making sure I go to the barber at least one a month (with my son, whose hair grows at the same rate as mine)

Don’t go for a striped or squared shirt

Here is where we diverge a bit from real life. Yes. Stripes and squares aren’t the best selection most days of the week. They are a lot worse for a video meeting. Why? Because WebRTC and Zoom software has a hard time dealing with stripes and squares properly – it takes up a lot of bandwidth to treat them in a way that works well. They also look really bad in low resolutions. 

As much as possible, aim for a solid color shirt.

👉 I decided to level up my game a bit here. I am trying to transition from “cool” T-shirts (which I love) to polo shirts (which are ok). We’ll see how that goes

Put on your pants

Video meeting. No one sees your plants. Maybe someone sees your belt – also questionable. But pants?

So why put them on?

1. You may end up standing or moving around for one thing or another. Better not have that haunt you and become the virtual office chat of the month
2. When you dress up, you usually act differently. Going to meetings in your PJ is really cozy, but is that the feeling you want to have and convey in your business meetings?

👉 When I started off with my consulting business years ago, I made it a point to dress when I start my day. Working from home is great, but I needed a way to separate myself from home while at home. Dressing in clothes instead of staying in my PJ is my small ritual to mark that separation

That said, I don’t change my shows… not even when I record videos at home.

Decide on your background

Are you doing the meeting from your laundry room? Is your bed a mess? Are the kids running around in the background tearing at each other? Maybe you should blur that background or yours. Or replace it.

If you replace it, then don’t go for a tacky vacation background. We’re doing serious work here after all. Brand that background with the company’s logo and colors. That’s assuming the company provided a few such background images to use. They have – haven’t they? And if they haven’t then go and demand one. While at it, the corporate backgrounds shouldn’t be boring and tacky either, which is a challenge these days, since most are.

Or just choose a setting where you don’t really need to replace your background.

I don’t like replacing the background because it is never polished enough as a solution –

• The image is “off”
• That headset on your ears comes and goes, getting randomly replaced by the background
• Holding a book, a cup or anything doesn’t show properly
• The swiveling chair’s back is also in and out of the background
• That cool jacket of yours seems to fool Zoom into thinking it is background

That‘s my background. I should probably shave to fit in a wee bit better.

And that picture? There for too long. I need to go to my mom’s house and hunt for one of her newest paintings – my wife hinted that there’s one or two I might fancy for a replacement.

👉 Real or fake background – make sure it works well for you. It gives an impression to others about you. I find myself looking at people’s background in meetings all the time – as a kind of a made up sociology study in my head

Take care of your microphone (and speaker)

Don’t believe all the AI hype about improving audio quality.

It isn’t that it doesn’t work. It does. But the results? Not as good as a great microphone and acoustic.

Get and use a decent mic.

Try not using the over the head / over the ear headphones that come with speakers. At least not if you plan on replacing or blurring your background (for the reasons why, check above…).

For best quality? The over the head headphones are likely your choice. Otherwise, find a good saucer or professional mic to do the work. They cost a bit, but definitely worth it.

Meetings are there for a reason. And that’s communicating with each other. If you can’t be heard well enough, then what’s the point?

I use a Jabra Speak speakerphone. I got it when I found out I am spending hours a head in meetings and my ears started to ache. Best purchase for meetings I’ve done at the time.

👉 I should probably start familiarizing myself with upgrading my game to the new speak2…

Use a decent camera

Cameras suck. At least all those who have VGA resolution only. The old ones or the ones sold during the pandemic when there were no web cameras available (my Logitech 1080p camera has a Chinese name to it – a parallel import shtick during the pandemic).

The camera I really use? The Obsbot… I love it

It has its quirks that I had to configure (gesture controls were messing around with zoom and stuff). The automatic tracking and framing of people is great – it is a nice conversation opener when needed – on top of the camera being good enough for my needs with built-in pan, tilt AND zoom.

👉 Just make sure you have a good camera that gives great results. Especially if you plan on doing frequent video meetings

Room lighting should make you shine

You picked a shirt? Took care of your haircut and shave line? Decided on the background to use? Got a good camera? Great! What about lighting?

For my own recordings (not meetings mind you), I started using a light ring – it just gets better results.

If you can, make sure the lighting in the room you use puts you… in a positive light (pun intended). In general, back lighting is bad. Front light at an angle is good. Overhead light is questionable. Multiple light sources (placed strategically, which will be a challenge for most) is great.

👉 There’s enough resources online about lighting for video conferencing (that I don’t usually follow but should). If you want to learn more, the Webex blog post about lighting is a good place to start

Location, location, location

Just like hotels, your location matters.

I’d like to look at the location aspect from two different angles – network and ambiance. We already touched the background angle, which is also about… location.

Network

The network connection where you plan to do the meeting matters. It needs to be great. Pristine. Flawless.

When we bought our apartment some 8 years ago, I decided in advance which room would be my office. I then made sure to have it wired to the home internet access point directly. And then I made sure to wire my desktop PC to it. To top it off, I placed the WiFi access point inside the room itself, so that if I need to use a laptop – it will have the best possible signal in that room as well.

Why go to all that fuss? The better the network the higher the stability and the quality of your online meetings are going to be.

👉 Make sure the network you use is up for the task. For me, that’s about having fiber to the home with the highest profile I can get in my neighborhood

Ambiance

Do you live in a glass house? Or just a room with too many glass walls or windows? That’s going to affect the meeting with what is known as reverb (use that word whenever you want to sound smart about audio).

Reverbs I’ve been told are the worst and the hardest to fix. Recently I recorded something with the wrong mic. Going to Fiverr for an expert to fix this manually got me 1 out of 4 that agreed to do the work. The results were “fine”. But then my video editor (=my son) said I don’t sound like myself and at points it is unintelligible. So I had to record it all over again – with the correct mic (did I mention you should have a good mic?).

I do these recordings in the living room because I want the bricks background behind me for some of the videos. But for that, I need to make sure I get a high quality lapel mic so that there’s no reverb effect.

Neighbors? Crying babies? Cars? Lawn mower? You don’t want these to cause issues. From time to time they’re fine, but if they become too frequent in your calls, you should consider switching rooms or places.

👉 Think of the best place that is quiet enough and plays nice with your mics for your meetings

Have more prep time

Up until here, we dealt with the obvious and easy tips for better meetings. These are the things everyone’s telling in one way or another (and most of us ignore). From here, I want to touch a few points that were raised during the podcast episode I listened to, or that popped into my mind during that episode.

We’ll start with the prep time angle.

When we do remote meetings, it means we saved the commute time. Going to and back from that meeting. That time saved? Shouldn’t be used for more meetings. Or for more work. It should first be used to prepare better for the meeting itself.

That’s important.

We can now come better prepared to meetings just because we have a bit more time for them.

An example? Giving a sales person more meetings with more leads likely won’t mean he makes more money to the company. In the end, your company is better served with a salesperson who prepares a lot better for meeting with leads that have a higher potential of becoming customers.

Just increasing the funnel and bringing in more leads that might not be validated properly just because sales now have more time because they’re not commuting? Bad idea.

The same can apply to other types of meetings just as easily. The more prepared you are for a meeting the more effective the meeting will be and the better outcome you’ll get from that meeting.

👉 Quality and not quantity. Use the extra time to prepare better for the meetings you have

Ignore your smartphone

You are probably like me. You glance at your smartphone every few seconds. I bet you even did it now if you’re reading this on your screen and the smartphone is next to you. Trying to see if there’s a new notification there waiting for you. The dopamine rush is intoxicating.

Some of us still don’t glance at our smartphone when we are sitting in a room talking to others in person. The same courtesy needs to be extended to the people on the screen in a remote meeting. Why? Because we care. And if we don’t, then why are we having that meeting in the first place?

Whatsapp messages, calls, slack and all the rest? They can and should wait. Just put your smartphone face down. Ignore it during the meeting.

👉 People know when you glance off the screen at something else, so if you do it, make sure you explain why and that the explanation makes enough sense

Shut off notifications on your device

Similar to your smartphone, but more nuanced.

Doing meetings from a laptop or a PC means there are lots and lots of applications there looking for your attention. Usually, mail applications, slack and similar have by default a popup showing up when there are incoming messages.

Disable them all.

Don’t let anything popup unattended from applications.

These might embarrass you the moment you share your screen. So just don’t let this be an option at all.

For good measures, whenever possible, only share a specific application or tab and not the whole screen. To avoid embarrassment.

👉 Go now to the settings of Outlook and Slack. Change the configuration there to not show pop ups for anything. I’ll wait

Create a summary… at the beginning of the meeting

Had time to prepare for the meeting? Use it also to create the summary.

Summary? Done in the preparation phase and not after the meeting? Yes.

What’s the point in having a meeting if there’s no objective or something you wish to achieve in the meeting? Figuring what your objective of the meeting is is a great starting point. From there, go think about what a summary of a meeting that meets your objective would look like.

Why? Because doing so would:

1. Focus the meeting and make it more effective
2. Make the part of actually summarizing the meeting simpler

So. you think about the meeting, its objective and how a summary looks when you prep for the meeting. You then go about conducting the meeting, always thinking of your summary and how it changes. And then once done – you should have most of it already there in your head. All that is left is to write it down. And in some cases, it might even be better to record a video summary – especially for customer calls (that’s upping the game).

👉 Why go to all the trouble? Because we’re aiming for effectiveness. We’re here to get things done and not to just sit in meetings

That WebRTC angle

Sorry, but I couldn’t help myself.

While this article has nothing directly to do with WebRTC (or Zoom by the way), I can’t not say something about it 😉

Zoom was the exemplification of why WebRTC isn’t good – they were virtually the only vendor not using WebRTC even in the browser. Guess what? They are using it now…

Up your game

As the old saying goes – do what the teacher says, not what the teacher does

I don’t always follow the advice in this article, and probably I should. We should all up our game in these online remote meetings.

What are you going to take from here in preparation for your next meeting?