Didn't you give us Def Leppard?

This should make sense:

:)

Blurring background is a good and acceptable way of not showing your background in a clear detailed look. This is probably the most cost-effective way of not letting your background be a distraction.

Yes, a neutral single colour background works the best. I have some which are surplus/end of roll drapery fabric which was bought cheap long time ago.

The whole idea of background is to complement the main subject, YOU. Also, it needs to look natural.
When I use scenery as a zoom background they are always taken inside with part of the room showing to give that natural look.
You can add some patio door or window frame lines to your background photo.

If you don't care about a professional image then "nothing really matters".

Clean simple background enhances your "look". If you are in an internal meeting, it probably doesn't matter. If you are teaching/training/coaching then you need that professional image.
Recall the BBC correspondent doing live feed and his child, then mother burst into the room?

As someone who was a professional photographer during the times of chemical sensors, lighting is very important. While the technology of capturing the light/image has changed the physics of lighting has not changed.
Chromakey (green screen) does work very well. There is a cost involved in making it work, a good quality green screen and lighting it properly (evenly) is step one.
Then you need to light yourself properly. In order to look natural, the direction of the main light should be from the same direction on you as it is in the background photo.
To light yourself well and still be able to read your screen/monitor is another can of worms.

OMG, we haven't even touched on Audio

Takeaway:
Keep things simple within the expectation of your audience. If it is work from home internal meetings then blurring the background is probably enough.
Once you start down this techno-prefecto path there is no end in sight and a money pit.

Ergonomics are important. So are noise cancelling headphones if you live with others. Possibly a door, too, if you have kids who are also staying home and don't need supervision.

For the non-serious meetings - Heard a office mate has a zoom background which looks like a dinosaur chomping his head or something like that? I suggested my partner request his co-workers hold up their pets during video conferences or stick in a toy. I heard they were playing their usual weekly co-worker in person D&D game over webex this evening. Awkward but evidently doable.

I find zoom audio when dialed in via phone and other side just a laptop in an open room to be quite hard to hear.

I have been saying I wish I could take my office chair (Aeron Size A) home. Not sure it would fit in my car's back seat. My team mate shared a sit stand desk which the local Costco might carry. My desk is an older Ikea desk which works for me as I rarely stand to work. I did bring home a keyboard & mouse wrist rest and made a foot rest with a few old large books and binder. My "laptop stand" is the box it came in but I might see if IT can lend me a slightly taller one for home use.

Just got to make sure I still stand up and move about.

Most importantly, I shouldn't put my laptop on the corner (aka horrible position) and twist to view it as the web cam/second screen.

I also have a pebble textured standing anti-fatigue mat that I stand barefoot on. During my sessions, I can wear whatever I want waist down.
I switch between standing and sitting while a video is playing for the participants. The sit-stand cycle is around 10-15 minutes each.

That would be like a very important phone and urgent call that I took some years ago on a Friday afternoon to resolve Monday's problem. I knew it would arrive when I was out of the office fully engaged in an important pre-arranged activity.

I had earphones set to auto-answer and we sorted the issue. The caller then commented that it was a very clear call and he could hear running water in the background and asked where I was. In my waders in a river fly-fishing on one of the finest salmon beats in the country! He was beavering away in London and his single word response questioned my parents marital status :D

But wanting to maintain professional appearances might not allow that in many circumstances.

In addition to Teams, Bluejeans (as mentioned in the first post). I've also used Amazon Chime and Adobe Connect - hated them both.

I'm external facing, but had some conference calls with our internal IT team. Camera on is a thing at our company. One of the IT guys was working from home and had his kitchen and hallway in the background, complete with his wife walking around (unawares, we think) in her sweats and mussed hair carrying around their infant. Maybe we should've said something, but we didn't.

My Bold
Totally agree. Most companies' IT department would/should address this issue prior to use.

Is there an easy way to run my Windows laptop through my desktop Mac with some sort of wired connection? I currently use Remote Desktop, which generally works but takes a while to set up each time. The address seems to always change and it's a bit of wasted time each morning to reconnect.

Teamviewer free for home use

It's going to be interesting to see which teleconference service providers survive the onslaught of neophyte "distance workers".

What issue? None of this is new. Most employees take their phones and laptops home every night and use them on their home networks. If they want to access files/sites on the company network, they VPN. Hacking a good VPN tunnel would be extremely difficult. The beauty of VPNs is that you can limit where on your corporate network that each user is allowed to go. If you wanted to each user could have different permissions.

Despite it’s name, the coronavirus doesn’t affect computer networks.

Log in to your router and assign a fixed IP address to the computer you Remote Desktop into.

Agreed. And also when traveling. Companies have long assumed the networks employees connect from outside the office may be unsafe (hotels, cafes, etc.).

This.

There are a couple of different ways to accomplish this; the easiest is to use a feature common to most modern routers called DHCP* Reservation or Address Reservation and will usually be found in the LAN Settings section of your router's configuration. Assuming you reserve the address that DHCP has currently allocated for your Windows laptop, you won't need to do anything in Windows to enable this once the router is configured.

Refer to your router vendor's support/documentation for configuring a device to use this feature.

* Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

I work from home 80% of the time but my most important aspects are;

• Monitor, Keyboard & Mouse... using the laptop as a laptop is not comfortable
• Wireless Headset... the Plantronics Voyager Focus UC Stereo is excellent
• A reliable connection

To add to this, depending on your corporation's infrastructure there are several ways to secure data... MDM (enforce certain requirements).... Citrix (VDI's and Xenapp can limit what is seen)... geofencing as suggested above... various ATP solutions... depends on how secure you want to make the remote connection and how much effort you are willing to dedicate to it...

Also privacy/security in that you might not want a random business contact to see personal items in your home or details of where you live. For example, even in a dedicated home office, architectural details could permit someone to know where you live (distinctive condo building features or view from window) and you might not want to show family photos or particular personal items, such as something that could identify your religion.

Wow, this is taking the paranoia to new heights!

Yeah... somebody might be able to see where I live. Great. They should just ask, I'll gladly tell :D

Cameras ?

do you just use the webcam on your laptop or did you buy a HD camera or better ,

Is there a bandwidth problem if you get too good of a camera ?

Any other hints ?

Thanks

Depends on your needs. I use a MacBook and for video conferencing with Zoom for instance the built in camera works fine. For other cases you may need to upgrade.

Something like this item might be useful:
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...5e9f428876.jpg

Very nice. Do they have one with old National Geographics?

I use an external webcam. It’s higher quality and gives me more flexibility in positioning it. Most apps will detect an unstable connection and scale down or even pause video if it gets too bad (kind of like what Apple does with FaceTime).

My cat routinely crashes video calls. It’s like he knows when it’s time. People cheer when they see him now. A little bit of levity and a reminder that we’re all people in these times is not a bad thing.

Would you recommend that camera? And if yes, what type is it? I'm considering one for my work Windows 10 VM I run inside of my Mac (long story).

I use the Logitech C922 Pro Stream. I’d recommend it... it’s performed quite well even in low light situations.

any of the Logitech 9xx will be a big improvement over most built in camera and enough for most work from home meetings.

Since I produce training material as well with clips from my online sessions, I use a higher quality camera and lens. Lumix GH5 with 10-25/1.7.
BUT
Like my reply to background above it is another never ending money pit unless you have other uses for the camera and lenses.
The converter /connection from the camera's output to USB 3.0 input is over $100 as a start.

I like Jump.

Im 100% telecommute and we use blue jeans for large meetings and for smaller ones Google Meet works great for everyone outside of China.

I recently moved to a mesh using Orbi and it’s been great. Internally I get great WiFi speeds on both 5GHz and 2.4GHz using the Orbi gear inside and for a good distance outside my house.

I also like Unifi gear and my company’s IT team uses that for WiFi in our offices and event kit to set up mesh networks wherever we have events of any size.

additionally:

A good keyboard. Using a laptop is great, but if I have to use one for more than a week I prefer a full sized keyboard for more comfortable typing.

a large LCD monitor. My work laptop is a 13” MacBook Pro and it’s great for travel and working from events and meetings, but when I’m in my home office I use a 34” curved gaming monitor. It makes things so much easier on my eyes.

also, I work, as I said, telecommute full time and have for the last ten years. So outside of tech, I also suggest this:

do your work in a room away from the rest of your home if you can. It’s hard “turning off” if you’re not used to having work right there.

get up and walk away every so often. It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in work, even at home. Step away every so often and just take five or ten minutes to take a break and recharge a bit.

Great advice. Totally agree on the getting up. I usually work early, work out a couple of hours, then jump back on

BTW, that username. Classic. Named after the Princess bride or Ulbricht?

Not found one but if vital to the image you're trying to "project" some companies will customise these things for you. Personally I quite fancy a beach scene.....

I have a few images similar to that but better quality taken at famous and beautiful libraries around the world.
To make this work well with zoom is to throw the background out of focus a bit and use that slightly out of focus image.

As I mentioned before, background needs to look and feel natural.

Perhaps like this one from the Long Room, St. John's College?

https://photos.smugmug.com/Europe/Ir...DSC0850-X2.jpg

Oh back on topic, I use Zoom in the US.

Often I wonder if I can use it between China and US?

Okay. I’m new to zoom. O want the British Library Reading Room. I can snag a picture, how do I add it to zoom?

My team meetings have had their BBC Dad moments. I routinely check out my remote team mate's view outside his window as has a nice view. Occasionally we'll get kids or pets. I find the pets to be less noisy, usually, but it's all good.

allset2travel Zoom does seem to work for China. I have team mates in Shanghai who also have access to corporate VPN, but sometimes I'll hear them dialed in from mass transit. I set my zoom app on mac defaults to camera off and mute on entry.

The arrow beside video camera bottom left
Video settings
Virtual background
...