As part of our continued celebration of Berrien RESA’s Green Meeting Month, here are some tips on organizing meetings via videoconference.
Communication Tips
- Make sure all sites reserve the room or videoconference system to participate in the meeting.
- Facilitate the entrance of people into the meeting; welcome them and make sure they can see and hear ok.
- Facilitate the conversation. If the meeting is more than a one-way delivery of information, you may want an experienced videoconference facilitator to assist for the first meeting or two. This facilitation will help everyone learn how to behave in a videoconference. If not available, the meeting leader should not assume that people will just speak up at the beginning. It is helpful to call on people to ask for comment.
- Side conversations should occur only when the site is muted and when doing so will not interrupt or detract from the meeting.
- Make sure any materials for the meeting are sent beforehand; preferably digitally to all the participants.
Technical Tips
- Arrange for bridging the sites into one meeting
- Make sure all the sites test ahead of time (particularly test H.239 / sharing the computer)
- Plan to connect 30 minutes in advance of the meeting to work out any issues
- MUTE! The easiest way to make sure all sites are muted as they join the meeting is to set each endpoint to mute on autoanswer.
- Prepare visuals appropriately for videoconferencing
More Resources
For more tips, check out these resources:
- Organizing a Multipoint Videoconference from TWICE
- Ten Tips for Organizing a Videoconference from the University of Florida
- Watch: The Videoconference Zone (Scroll down a little)