General Tips for Better Videoconferencing:

Wear "Videoconferencing Friendly" Clothing: Generally, normal work attire is appropriate. From a technical standpoint, bright colors transmit well (with the exception of red, which tends to bleed). White does not work well with the chroma-key. Pastels  or darker-brighter colors are best. Busy or loud prints, plaids, or stripes should be avoided. They tend to come alive and are very distracting to viewers. Do not wear green if you will be presenting  from our teacher console in the studio. We use green-screen chroma-key technology (like the TV weatherperson) and parts of  you covered with green will disappear. 

Avoid wearing all-light or all-dark clothing. The camera’s automatic brightness control can get confused. All-light clothing can tend to make the camera automatically darken the picture and your face may look shadowed.

Arrive Early: Arrive at least 15 minutes early in order to organize your presentation materials and become familiar with equipment. This is a good time to discuss your presentation with the technical staff so they can adjust camera presets, prepare for your visual aids, etc.

Breaks: In longer conferences, those over an hour, you should allow for 15-minute breaks. (You can call them five or ten minute breaks, but they always wind up being longer, so we recommend planning on 15 minutes.)

Delivery: Just be yourself. Talk and move naturally. Speak up, but don’t yell. Be sure to maintain eye contact with the camera. It is your audience. Just think of it as another person in the room. There is a brief delay involved when using the multi-conference unit, so pause slightly for others to reply when interacting with the far end sites.

Audio: During multipoint videoconferences, any sounds made at a far end site will  make that site take over the video on the multi-conference unit and it will then be on everyone else’s screen. Therefore, you MUST remember to keep your microphone MUTED when not engaged in interactive dialog with the host site.

Unnecessary Sound and Movement: Avoid distracting sounds and movements such as sliding your mic around, shaking your leg, chewing gum, tapping your pen, swiveling in your chair, jangling  jewelry, etc. The microphones are very sensitive and any noises in the room will be picked up and amplified on the other end.

Document Camera & PowerPoint Slides: Keep your fonts LARGE, BOLD, and sans-serif (arial, tahoma, etc.). Philosophies vary on the minimal font size, some say 28 pt is minimal and 44 pt is optimal, so just remember that BIGGER is BETTER.

Always use the landscape format. A four wide by three high ratio is best for graphics. To allow for TV screen cutoff, keep at least a one inch “safe area” around all of your slides, documents, and graphics. Just try to keep pictures simple and words few. Use light type on dark backgrounds or dark type on light backgrounds. Do not use busy backgrounds. Avoid transparencies in favor of actual paper documents when possible.

Far end sites that don’t have document cameras can hold their visuals up in front of the Polycom camera, so that they can be seen by the other participating sites. It is not the best method, but it works in a pinch.

Using Computers (laptops): When using computer applications like Word, Excel, Access, etc., keep in mind that they are difficult to see when shown on a video monitor. Enlarge your font size as much as possible. When using Internet Explorer you can increase the text size  by choosing larger or largest when needed. 

 Revised on 11-01-07