(bright violin music)
- [Woman] (low voice) Okay, is my video working?
Hey, can you guys hear me?
- [Man] I'm sharing my screen right now.
Can everyone see that?
Great.
- [Man] Is everybody here?
Can we get started?
- With the way that Zoom works,
whenever there's a speaker speaking,
it puts them on the big screen,
so you don't wanna be on the big screen
if you're not supposed to be on the big screen.
So mute your microphones.
Go to the audio preferences,
and then from there, you check the box that says,
"Mute my microphone when I join a meeting."
- Spouses working from home, babies crying,
kids home from school, we're all dealing with it.
If you're the one in control of the meeting, good news.
You have the power to mute all your attendees upon entry.
Just go into the Preferences menu,
and under meetings, select Advanced Settings.
Toggle the button that says mute participants upon entry.
That will automatically mute everyone
who joins your meeting.
If they do need to talk, they can always unmute themselves.
- Turning off your video, when you join a meeting
will save you some major hassle.
Go into your Zoom preferences,
and then click on the video section of it.
Then when you're there, you check the box that says
turn off my video when I join a meeting.
Collect yourself, make sure your environment looks nice,
looks presentable, nothing embarrassing is happening.
Then you can join the meeting,
and everyone can see your lovely face.
(bright acoustic guitar)
- When you're working from home, especially on Zoom,
it's important to keep as much professionalism as possible.
The best way you can do this
is to turn off any notifications
that might go off during a meeting.
You want to go to the upper right hand corner of your screen
where there are those three little dots.
If you scroll up, there's a Do Not Disturb button.
You wanna turn that from off to on.
That will stop any what's up pings, Facebook chats.
You don't really want those going off.
Otherwise mostly you just don't want to look distracted.
So another tip I have is to clear off anything on your desk
so you can stay focused,
and sort of keep your hands on your lap
or use them to talk as I seem to need to.
Anyone who knows me knows
that I'm sort of constantly doing this.
My biggest
work tip
is one of these,
available at pharmacies across the country.
Take a bobby pin, tuck these guys away,
and minus a couple flyaways, you're good to go.
Looks good.
(bouncy jazz music)
- You can also check a box that has Zoom
touch up your appearance.
Now I won't tell you if that's on right now,
but I will say it's saved me many a day
that my hair was unwashed
and my circles were dark under my eyes.
- So yes, vanity, very important.
Knowing your angles.
So I kind of hate this view of myself.
I think I sort of look like a thumb.
I find a way to prop my computer up.
So what I use is my bound volume
from when I was an editor at my student newspaper.
I sort of just pick my laptop up, put it down,
and then fix my screen, and then here I am.
Slightly better view, and I feel like I'm just looking
more dead on instead of any of these
double chin sort of angles.
- Another appearance tip, if you want to avoid looking
a little bit like a witness protection silhouette,
a desk lamp and a white wall behind your camera
(bell ringing)
lights ya up, so all your friends can see your face.
Or have your desk face a window
with a good amount of natural light.
- I have a tendency to sort of nervously sweat.
I'm not afraid to say it.
It's my body cooling itself down,
but one thing to think about is temperature regulation.
in New York, we don't really control our heat,
so I have propped up a window just to let a cool breeze in,
kind of keeps me activated.
I think the best thing you can do to look professional
is to feel it, sort of look good.
(lively acoustic guitar)
- Zoom's whiteboard feature, usually used for things
like brainstorming or idea sharing on screen shares,
is actually really useful for blowing off some steam
on our Friday game nights.
What that meant for the teams that I was on at Wirecutter,
it's mostly Pictionary, which is bad news for me,
because with my drawing skills, I lose a lot.
- In order to use virtual backgrounds,
you need to have a solid color backdrop like this.
Go to the video settings in Zoom,
and you'll see a virtual background option.
Click on that,
and there's all your photo options.
Whether it's to tell your co-workers, hey, this is fine,
or you wanna convince everyone
that you're in the coffee shop, when in fact
you're hanging out at Chalmun's Mos Eisley Cantina,
a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Or maybe you need to take a little quick break
and you want to step away for a moment,
but you don't want anyone to notice
that you're not on the screen,
so you just walk away and leave it like that.
(bright acoustic guitar)
- Please mute your microphone.
- Don't forget to mute your microphone.
- Remember to mute your microphone.
- Please mute your microphone.
Please mute your microphone.
Please, mute your microphone.