We have all migrated back to our homes, waiting for the great pandemic to subside, so that when the coast is clear we can scuttle back to the office in safety. Or maybe, we have concluded that we don't need to be at the office as much anymore or at all. The end result is that we have been relegated to a low tech environment, with almost zero tech support. If we were presenting in a meeting room, we would have the crowd right there in front of us. Perfect communication conditions, where we can marshal all of our persuasion capabilities and let them loose on the audience. We would have a big screen with our slides up there for all to see. If the room was big enough, we would have a high quality microphone at our disposal.
Meanwhile, back at home, we have our laptop and that is about all. I was on a webinar which featured some heavyweights from the public and private Japanese financial sector, as well as other worthies. No one on that call had a clue about how to arrange their laptops so that the camera angle was correct or so that the lighting was done properly. If we want to get our message across we have to show up in a way that has credibility, visibility and reliability. Of course, everyone was seated when doing the calls, which meant their body language was truncated. I didn’t see much animation in the faces or much tapping into body language going on either.
If we are just an attendee at an online meeting or a participant in a webinar presentation, as one of the audience, then just sitting there makes perfect sense. Nothing better for multitasking when boring presenters are on screen than sitting down to easily access all the tech escape routes. Unfortunately when it is us on screen presenting, we want none of that to be occurring. We want everyone hanging on our every word, diligently taking notes of the gold nuggets, we are delivering and exercising total absorption in our message.
The cameras in the laptops are invariably wide angle only. If we are going to be presenting regularly online, we should consider buying a separate attachable camera and look for one which has a narrower range of field. We want to be in closeup mode as much as possible, in order to diminish the competition in our background. We also should invest in getting some better lighting arrangements, so that we are in full shot and not too much else. I was watching a webinar a few days ago and one of the participants, who I know quite well, had so little light on his face, he looked like an extra in a horror movie, as he wafted into shot emerging from the gloomy darkness of his home.
We should also arrange the height of our laptop so that we can stand up. This of course means wearing a suit, including the trousers, as we will be getting an almost full body shot. We will still be very close to the camera, so we are still going to be clearly visible for the audience. If you think about a presentation at a venue, the speaker can be anywhere from three to thirty meters away from the audience. We will seem much closer in our onscreen version, than what a typical audience sitting in the cheap seats at the back, would experience.
Standing helps us to release our body language and particularly our gestures. The seated non-use of our hands is one of the biggest presenting mistakes in this current online meeting universe. When we are seated, we are also very much constricted in terms of how much energy we can put out. Standing will enable us to seem more powerful, dynamic and persuasive. It is also a lot more relaxing to be standing, I have found, because of the freedom it supplies.
As always, the key is to keep looking at the camera lens and not the faces on the screen. If we have slides, then we should do what we always do and use a slide advancer of some configuration. It might just be a cordless mouse or something a bit more elaborate. You can also ask your producer to relieve you of all the tech related duties, so that you can concentrate on your message and your audience. As speakers, standing is a more natural situation and one which has been presenter normality until recently.
This work from home situation and therefore, present from home reality, isn’t going away anytime soon. Short term thinking, employing jerry-built solutions, is what amateurs do. The professionals understand the situation and adjust accordingly. Which one are you?