The use of services like Zoom and Teams has greatly increased with the pandemic. I had never heard of Zoom before the pandemic and Teams was a tool that we had only started playing around with at work. These programs allow you to do group video calls. You can also share what you are working on from your computer desktop. This week, I discovered some new rules for myself regarding meetings that I attend on-line.
Rule 1: Be aware of the status of your camera, but always assume that it is on
Rule 2: Never open another program that covers the meeting program on your display
Rule 3: Be aware of your wardrobe, especially when joining meetings from home
Rule 4: Turn off your camera if you step away from the meeting
Rule 5: Refrain from any behavior on camera that you wouldn’t do in an in-person meeting
This is how I came up with these rules
I had an early morning meeting this week. I decided to join the meeting from home. It was early enough that I planning to call in before I had cleaned up or dressed for work. I would wait until after the call to get ready to go in. For this call, I was only using the screen on my laptop. At various times throughout the meeting, I opened other software programs to get information for the meeting. At one point, I had several emails opened that covered the Teams program. With the program covered, I was no longer seeing faces of the other people at the meeting or the video from my own camera. At this point, I’m breaking rule 2, covering the Teams software. This causes me to treat the meeting like an audio only call, violating rule 1.
We are at a point in the meeting where I don’t have to look at anything on my screen. I notice something on the window in the office at my house. I stand up to look at the window. I break rule 4 by leaving my camera going. As I return to my seat, I remember that I am wearing boxer shorts and a tee shirt, a clear violation of rule 3. As I stood, the other people on the call would have gotten a perfect view of my cotch. Thankfully, I stepped to the side so no one had to see that for very long. I only realized that I might have been putting on a show for the other people on the call as I was scratching myself while returning to my seat, a big violation of rule 5. When I realized what I was doing, I quickly stepped back to the side. I took the next minute thinking of what I was doing and how likely it was that the camera had captured it. I knew that when I stood, everyone saw my undies. I was less sure that anyone had seen me scratching myself. I stood next to my seat, watching what I could see when standing at various places and recreating in my mind what I was doing where. I was trying to convince myself that no one saw the scratch. Hopefully, I was out of sight when that was going on.
I also considering another rule.
Rule 6: When the pants are off, the camera stays off.