A NOSE PICKER'S GUIDE TO VIDEO-CONFERENCING
There is nothing more off-putting than watching someone pick their nose on a giant screen when you are just about to conduct a serious business meeting.
Between you and me, (and keep this one to yourself), I still get very nervous whenever I have to make a presentation. I hope that it will flow but the only way I can work is to keep going over it again and again, making sure I haven’t missed anything and don’t freeze halfway through.
So there I am after a sleepless night trying to preempt their response to our offer in those last few moments before the signal connects. Just as a picture appears on the screen there are a couple of seconds before the person on the other end knows I can see him, and I get to watch him playing with his Blackberry and picking his nose in plain view until he realizes and tries to pass it off as just a scratch.
The scene reminds me of something out of a Bond film where the villain’s face is projected onto the wall and he reveals his outlandish demands to the room – only with biscuits and more nose-picking.
The only problem comes when the person fidgets a lot as the image can blur making it difficult to read their expression, despite having a good signal. However, there are many advantages of video conferencing including reduced travel costs, scheduling meetings at short notice and, of course, being able to actually see the person you are communicating with.
It is also preferable to telephone conferencing as, with the latter, it’s worryingly easy to dig yourself into a large hole without realizing you’ve made a horrible mistake until you stop talking and everyone stays silent or starts laughing. This is the second problem: It can be almost impossible to stop an excitable colleague from talking as any interruption triggers a frustrating series of pauses as you both try and speak at the same time.
As thebigword will be using video conferencing more frequently in the future, and fully incorporating this technology into our interpreting service (watch this space!), we will be producing a guide to video conferencing etiquette to avoid as many nose-picking incidents as possible.
Have a great weekend!
Larry
