On this episode of The Friday Habit podcast, our guest is David Hepburn of Hepburn Creative. He and his team are committed to optimizing the video platform for their clients before, during, and after the coronavirus pandemic crisis. Since the vast majority of business meetings (and many personal ones as well) have transitioned so abruptly to video, it is likely that you haven’t had the time to put much thought into how you come across to your colleagues on screen. David provides listeners of The Friday Habit with 5 simple ways to improve how people view you in meetings over video.

1. Change your perspective – Your camera should be just below your eye level. This will allow everyone else on the call to look up to you a bit, elevating you in their minds.
2. Adjust your room lighting – Make sure you do not sit with a window behind you, but rather in front of you. Also, try not to mix different lighting temperatures: use daylight lightbulbs if you are doing calls during the day and warm lightbulbs if you do more calls at night.
3. Optimize your audio – Be conscious of the background noise around you and try to choose a microphone option that will isolate your voice as much as possible. Headphones with a microphone right by your mouth are probably the best for this scenario.
4. Be mindful of your background – Try to limit the likelihood that people will be distracted by what is going on behind you. A blank wall is a great option for video calls. It is also important that you either turn off your ceiling fan or make sure that it is not on camera, as this will cause problems for your camera and connectivity.
5. Be intentional about what you wear – Avoid wearing stripes and tight patterns. Even though the human eye can distinguish and process patterns like this, cameras are not able to translate them properly and this can be a distractor for the others on the call with you.

Your action item after this episode is to come up with an immediate solution to give you the proper camera angle.

Connect with David:

https://hepburncreative.com/

https://hepburncreative.com/#training 

https://www.instagram.com/hepburncreative/ 

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https://www.thefridayhabit.com/

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