Fortunately, I’ve got GbE cable running throughout the house, including between the furnace room (where the cable modem, router and primary GbE multi-port switch are located) and my office directly above it. And keep in mind, too, that the speed, latency, and overall reliability of the connection between your computer and the router are also critical an interference-plagued or otherwise inferior Wi-Fi connection just won’t cut it. Keep in mind that the bandwidth potential of your broadband modem will be for naught if your router can’t keep pace with it GbE LAN and WAN ports are key, along with similarly speedy packet processing inside the unit.
It’s fundamentally what compelled me to upgrade to Comcast’s Gigabit plan a bit more than a year ago, both for my own needs and so that my wife (who also works from home) could in-parallel hold her own meetings without either of us needing to worry about tromping on the other’s bandwidth needs. Upstream bandwidth is therefore the critical parameter in such situations. Keep in mind that when you’re on-camera and on-mic you’re a content creator-not the typical content consumer. One of the most common mistakes I see people make is focusing solely on their broadband Internet service’s downstream bandwidth. Here’s how I’ve learned to present myself both audibly and visually as effectively as my ugly mug and monotonous delivery allow.
Zoom’s now the norm, and cameras-on is assumed. And since nobody in the office has regular face-to-face contact right now, I’m no longer the outlier in this regard unfortunately, for this introvert, it also means that telephone-only meetings no longer suffice.
What’s changed, of course, is that pretty much everyone else is working from home right now, too a lot of lessons I learned a long time ago are more recent revelations for my peers. So, in a sense, the last couple of pandemic-influenced years aren’t anything new. While I talked about gear in a general sense (webcams, mics, lighting, etc.), I thought it might be helpful to follow up with some specifics on the equipment I’ve personally tried (for better and worse).Īs I mentioned last time, and as I write this in early November 2021, I’m about two months away from crossing through a quarter-century of working predominantly from home. In one of last month’s posts I provided some tips and tricks for effectively delivering virtual presentations (see “ Presenting online effectively: Experience-based tips for the technical professional“) many of these are equally valid even if you’re solely participating as a peer in a meeting, not actually screen-sharing a slide deck or otherwise leading the session.