Upping Your Zoom Game
We don’t love Zoom/Teams/Meet/Wedex (for this piece I will use the term Zoom which is my go-to) but without them nothing would get done during a pandemic. Most of us are saying we are sick of it but they are not going away and likely will represent a permanent change in how we do business. With these platforms in place and with the forced disruption of COVID-19, Bill Gates stated in a recent article in Entrepreneur Magazine that he thinks 50% of business travel and 30% of office life will disappear post-pandemic.
I can’t say I disagree.
While the technology is still a bit clunky, competition between Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet and the others is driving innovation and making the technology better and better.
As the pandemic started, most of my advisory work screeched to a halt but thanks to Zoom, I was able to pick up new work from unexpected sources (including a client based in Taiwan). Now it seems to be a lot easier to set up “face-to-face” meetings that would have otherwise taken weeks to book a time for in-person meeting. I miss the personal contact but the efficiency of Zoom is great and expands the geographic coverage of my contact base.
As much as we like to complain about Zoom, my eyes were opened to its broader possibilities and hot it could fundamentally change how we do business after listening to a Seth Godin podcast called the “Zoom Revolution”. He outlines a future that embraces video conferencing and ten changes in how we do business permanent.
He talks about the practical elements like to the benefits of minimal commuting, fewer time barriers and reducing the friction of multi-person communication but also the future potential of simultaneous translation (which is almost here), instant meetings and making meeting content available asynchronously.
Zoom – and I’m sure it’s the same with other platforms – are also allowing third parties to layer other capabilities on top of their software for specific purposes (Remo and Hopin come to mind).
That is the future but there are some things you can and should be doing today to improve the Zoom experience. There are a number of articles out there on what to do in terms of lighting, your background, etc. but I would recommend taking a step further if you have to make a particularly important presentation over Zoom.
Late in 2020, I was asked to give a presentation on Product Opportunity Mapping to the Edmonton Chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Normally it would have been an in person in front of 50 people but due to the lock down it was of course offered on Zoom.
Like most of my Zoom calls, I would have been in my home office, using my iMac and hoping there would be enough bandwidth (I would have to ban my boys from their regular online gaming routines) and frankly the lighting and audio in my and most home offices is less than ideal.
Luke Williamson the EO Learning Chair and EO member Matt Aubin of Keen Creative decided to up their game for this event and wanted to improve the overall production values. They held it at the Keen Creative studios and incorporated professional lighting, multiple HD camera angles for the video, lav mics for superior audio and made sure the Internet was solid (no wifi). These enhancements were easily integrated into the Zoom platform along with my PPT presentation, open discussions and breakout sessions. The session was run in real-time but also recorded for those who couldn’t attend in person (I recently re-watched the recording and its pretty clear that the production values vastly improved the quality my content!).
Keen also produced a short video on the front end of the session to add some humor to the whole process. Overall, they created something better than 99% of the Zoom calls we have become accustomed to (and in many cases have to suffer through).
Simple enhancements of a rock-solid internet connection (no wifi), a high-quality HD camera, and enhanced audio and lighting can be game changers in terms of the quality of a presentation and the viewer experience.
It may not be worthwhile to invest in this equipment for your personal use or day-to-day meetings but if you have an important presentation to make, this can be a differentiator – and if you really want to stand out and show your audience that you are really a professional, invest the few hundred dollars to access the right facilities
Matt at Keen Creative <matt@keen-group.ca> is offering this as a “product” and I’m sure others will as well.
You might as well figure out how to up your game as Zoom is not going away and there is still an opportunity to differentiate yourself before everyone else catches on.