How Can You Look Good When You Present at a Videoconference?

I have given dozens of presentations at in-person conferences over the years, but now everything needs to be online. That means, at least for now, no more uninspiring talks in a crowded, musty room with dim lighting. No more trying to show PowerPoint on a conference center projector that doesn’t work. Professional life, however, still requires us to attend conferences, so now we are going on Zoom (or whatever software your organization uses).

I’ll skip the technical stuff – thousands of people know more about that than I do – and just talk about making a good visual impression. I will write about vocal delivery and visual aids sometime later.

First, how should you dress? Suggestion: dress the way you think your boss will dress. How will the top people at the conference dress? Follow their lead. You don’t want to look like an also-ran; you want to look like someone who could lead the conference yourself in a few years. What counts as dressy casual for your group? For men, maybe a nice, long-sleeved dress shirt and a jacket with an open collar. That worked for former President Obama in his May 2020 commencement speech. For women, consider wearing a nice blouse and jacket. Is there a tropical vibe? A tasteful aloha shirt could be fine. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with full business attire, but, then, I’m a bit old-fashioned.

If you are a main presenter, and not a mere conference attendee, then please dress the part. If you want people to think that you're important, you need to look important.

For everybody, watch out for wrinkles. Avoid stripes and vibrant colors. Cameras love to show every wrinkle and they hate stripes. Solid colors are safest. In pre-pandemic days, I usually wore a white dress shirt at live conferences, but, on-camera, that's risky unless you are a lighting expert. Consider light blue or beige.

Unless this is a hiking and camping conference, absolutely avoid T-shirts, jeans, and anything that a teenager would wear to a picnic

In any case, never underestimate how important it is to project a professional appearance. Should people judge you by how you dress? Of course not. Do they judge you by how you dress? Yes, all the time. Deal with it.

Next, watch your background! Dr. Anthony Fauci set the Internet on fire when he testified online from his book-littered home office. His role was to be an academic expert, and the massive book pile established his ambiance. I’m sure he didn’t think about it for a minute, but it was a terrific look – for him. That same look would not work for a company CEO. Obama gave his graduation speech in front of neutral, neatly-arranged shelving. Most of us will want to keep the background simple.

Please, please, make sure there’s nothing embarrassing behind you. If you’re trying to show people that you're professional, you don’t want to get 10,000 views on YouTube of your overflowing trash can. 

If you're speaking from your home office, use a critical eye to check behind you while you are setting up. Imagine that your worst office enemy will pour over your background looking for a way to criticize you behind your back (so to speak). Or, if you want to invest a few bucks, would you like to use plain photographic background paper (not white)? It's boring, but how can you go wrong? If you wish, you can backlight it softly and gently.

Finally, use a zoom lens, if you have one, to focus on your head and shoulders. If your image is just going to be a tiny square on a computer screen (or, worse, on someone's 6-inch cell phone), you want people to see your face. That makes it easier for you to maintain eye contact with the camera and interact with your audience. And, yes, even if you don’t see them, they can see you! Why a zoom lens? If you get a close-up with a wide-angle lens, your nose and mouth will look too big. Not even Katy Perry can look good that way. Most of us look our best if the camera points directly to the face, and maybe just a tiny, tiny bit to the top and side. A high angle can make you look weak, while a low angle reminds people of Boris Karloff.

In other words, you want people to notice you, but you want them to notice you in a good way. Just because many people are quarantined does not mean that conferences aren’t important. We still need to make that human connection, no matter what profession or walk of life happens to be. We need to learn from other people; we need to stay in touch; we need to share what we know with others. How else can we grow?

We will still need to talk about PowerPoint, vocal presentation, microphone use, and so forth. Maybe later . . . keep an eye on my blog.  

Follow-up Post: How Can You Sound Good at a Video Conference?

P.S. Yes, they do make zoom webcams. They are expensive. I can’t afford one myself but, if you can, good for you. Check any photo or electronics store website.

P.P.S. You are using a computer or tablet with a webcam, aren't you? Surely you're not using a cell phone to attend a professional online conference, are you? Don't all of my readers know better than that?

People Did Not Believe Cassandra's Warnings about the Trojan Horse, and People Didn't Believe Bill Gates' Warning about Viral Pandemics

Coronavirus, CDC Image

When Cassandra, a tragic heroine in Greek mythology, rebuffed the moon-god Apollo, he laid a terrible curse on her: she would always tell the truth, but no one would ever believe her. So, when she warned the people of Troy not to trust “Greeks bearing gifts,” they ignored her and brought the Trojan horse into their city. We know how that turned out.

Given my lifetime career specializing in persuasion and debate, I can imagine few worse fates than to tell the truth and never be believed. Yet such was the fate of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who gave a brilliant Ted Talk in April 2015 – almost 5 years ago – to warn us that a virus pandemic was coming and that we were not ready for it. As we all know, over the next five years, our government took too little action to prepare for a viral pandemic, while President Donald Trump rolled back much of what little progress we had made.

People didn’t take Gates seriously. And yet, Gates had everything going for him. He is articulate. He is respected by Republicans and Democrats alike. Billionaires recognize him as one of the richest among them. His Ted Talk was well prepared and brilliantly argued. Like Cassandra, he was ignored.

To gain the audience’s attention, Gates rolled out an enormous barrel and talked about his youth. He said, “The disaster we worried about most was a nuclear war. That’s why we had a barrel like this down in our basement filled with cans of food and water. When the nuclear attack came, we will go downstairs down and eat from  that barrel.” He then warned that viruses pose a greater threat than atomic attack: “today the greatest risk of global catastrophe doesn’t look like this." pointed to the barrel. "Instead it looks like this.” He then showed an electron microscope photo of a virus. He continued: “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next two decades, it is most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war; not missiles but microbes.”

He argued that a repetition of the 1918 flu epidemic would kill 30 million people if it occurred today. He pointed out that, if we saw a Hollywood movie about a virus, a team of experts would swiftly move in to contain it. But, in real life, he explained that neither the world nor the United States has anything like that ready to go: “but that’s just pure Hollywood.” He continued: "The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola.” Gates explained that not just the United States, but Third World countries also needed to have access to vaccines and medical care. There is no guarantee that geography will confine a virus epidemic.

Gates pleaded that the world needs to “dramatically change the turnaround time to look to the pathogen and be able to make drugs and vaccines that fit for that of pathogen, so we can have tools, but those tools need to be put into an overall global health system, and we need preparedness.”

As we look at the pathetic response that the United States, Italy, and other nations have made to the coronavirus, it is obvious that Gates’ warnings were never heeded.

Gates' conclusion was chilling: “we don’t have to hoard cans of spaghetti or go down into the basement, but we need to get going because time is not on our side.” 

He was right. Time was not on our side.

Like Cassandra, Gates was right about just about everything. Like Cassandra, Gates watched in frustration as people ignored his warnings. He now says that we waited too long and can no longer avoid a coronavirus shutdown. What is most shocking is that, even this week, with catastrophe upon us, tens of millions of people continue to trust the outrageous falsehoods on conservative media, which went so far as to call the pandemic a hoax, and which were further promulgated by the president. Many people continue to support President Donald Trump's weak response to the pandemic even as they face death head-on.

In 1973, when I started graduate school at Northern Illinois University to study argumentation and debate, I took my first class from nationally-famous persuasion expert Charles Urban Larson. Like the naïve debate student that I was, I wrote a brief comment in one of my papers that logic was important in persuasion. When he returned my paper with a probably-undeserved A, Larson had penned a little note telling me that logic had nothing to do with persuasion. At the time, I was deeply offended. I now hereby apologize to Professor Larson. A world that was even minimally capable of logical thinking would have responded enthusiastically to Gates’ warning. Cassandra was right, but ancient Troy didn't listen. Gates was right, but the world didn't listen to him, either. So here we are.

Follow-ups for communication specialists: the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion does give us some reason to think that, under certain circumstances, logic and evidence can be persuasive. The issue seems to be that people need to feel that they are competent to think about evidence and have the time and motivation to do so. When people do not feel that they are able to examine evidence, they might instead listen to authorities instead of thinking for themselves. Unfortunately, too many people think that charlatans like President Trump and cable news hosts are authorities. So, as I said, here we are. Also, from a psychological standpoint, people don't take rare dangers seriously. They worry about next week's stock market, but don't worry about a hurricane or pandemic that strikes maybe once or twice a century.

I've blogged about the Elaboration Likelihood Model a few times earlier.

Here's a transcript of Gates' Ted Talk.