Tips for Success

Review helpful suggestions on how to make the most of your online meetings.

Prior to Meeting or Event Start

• If you plan to share your entire desktop, turn off any instant-messaging applications, notification software or other programs that may interrupt or distract from the meeting.
• Turn off any streaming media applications that may take up bandwidth and resource-intensive applications that may be taxing processor ability.
• Set the desktop display to a neutral background and adjust display settings to a mid-range resolution (e.g., 1024 x 768) to improve the display for attendees with lesser settings. This is also the optimal setting for recording a meeting.
• Clean up your desktop before a meeting. Eliminate wallpaper and icons that may distract your attendees.
• Make the documents you wish to share easily accessible.
• Run a trial meeting with a friend to anticipate questions and to familiarize yourself with the format of your online presentation.

Managing the Meeting

• Arrive a few minutes early to greet the attendees as they arrive and start the meeting on time. It also helps to have a welcome presentation running during this time. Your presence in these opening minutes can help establish the tone and direction of the meeting.
• Create a welcome message under the Meetings category of Preferences to greet your attendees as they arrive at the meeting.
• Provide an agenda at the start of the meeting, including estimated duration, and stick to it.
• Inform attendees what the purpose/goal of the meeting is, what to expect and when and how to ask questions and participate in the meeting.
• Provide information on how to use equipment or services and how to get assistance if needed.
• Nominate a co-organizer to monitor and respond to the chat log when someone is presenting.
• Encourage participation by using open questions such as "What would you suggest?" and "How do you feel about?"
• End the meeting clearly. Make sure all the attendees know that the meeting is formally over and stay on the line to address any last questions.

Managing the Conference Call

• Call in to the meeting from a location where there is little background noise.
• Consider globally muting participants at the start of the meeting to avoid noise issues. Turn off system prompts and sounds for when attendees join or leave a meeting. Read the Voice Conferencing section of the help files to familiarize yourself with the conference call features.
• Avoid using cellular and cordless phones because of static and use the phone handset or a headset instead of speakerphone because of background noise, tunnel effect and sentence clipping.
• Turn off your call waiting. The beep of a new call on another line is heard by everyone on the teleconference.
• Avoid putting your phone on hold during a teleconference. Your hold music will play into the conference call, and make it impossible for the other attendees to continue the meeting.
• Introduce yourself when you begin speaking and ask other attendees to also identify themselves before speaking. Not everyone in the meeting may know everyone else's voice.
• If you find you are having a sound quality issue, hang up and dial back in. Sometimes these problems clear themselves up when the bad connection is terminated.

| Views: 25277 | Last Updated: Thu, Jun 13 2013 5:03 PM

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