Quite Home Workspace
With some businesses deciding to keep a work at home environment for a while you have to come up with some creative ideas to actually get some work done. I am sure a lot of you have a similar story; your kids are at home trying to do their schoolwork online for the first time, you are at home trying to get your work done. Your kids get tired of it and start trying to get your attention, but you are on a video meeting. It can get pretty loud pretty fast.
Everyone is trying to figure out how to tell their family that they are busy and, on a call, or in a virtual meeting and to please come back without sounding rude. Well there are a few things you can do especially if you have a home office set up in a room.
CRESTRON ROOM INDICATORS
Crestron makes room status indicators that mount to the ceiling or door. A lot of corporate offices use them to let other people know that there is a meeting going on (red indicator) or if the room is free (green indicator). You may not want to go this route as it would make your house look like an office.
LED LIGHTS
Another option you could do would be putting LED lights above the door that would change colors. Red for you are in a meeting and cannot be disturbed. Green for when you are in between meetings and you can help out if someone needed you. Then when you were done for the day you can turn off the light and it would look like the outside of the room.
A lot of people use LED lighting for different parts of their houses. Cove lighting, lighting around your television, under your steps. The best part about using either of these options is that you can integrate it into your Crestron system. If you decide to use LED lights on your Crestron system to do something similar, you could have control over when the lights would be on.
If you would like us to take a look at doing this for you, give us a call and we will set you up with an appointment to go over your options. We will make sure that you have all of the information you need to make the right decision for you and your home.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio, video and security camera installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team (License #804783). One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.
Team Building
Everyone is used to in-person team building exercises. Team building is the procedure of turning a group of individual employees into an interconnected team. A team is a group of people organized to work together interdependently and supportively to meet the needs of their customers by accomplishing their purpose or goals. Team building helps bond employees.
Due to coronavirus and everyone having to work from home at this moment, team members are having to connect remotely. Companies are having to get creative with virtual team building activities so their employees can still get close to each other and build a team cohesiveness.
Thankfully there are virtual games and activities that your team may find enjoyable and help them connect and get to know one another. A lot of the video conferencing tools make it easy to connect to the virtual events.
Here are some virtual team building activities:
VIRTUAL CARD GAMES
Because everyone got quarantined a lot of physical card games were transferred to digital card games. You can get your team together and play Cards Against Humanity or Uno.
VIRTUAL LUNCHES
Just because you can’t have lunch together physically doesn’t mean you can’t have lunch with your team. You could set up a virtual lunch with your team and you could also provide lunch for everyone so they could be eating the same thing.
VIRTUAL HAPPY HOUR
A normal way that in-person teams used to bond was by going to happy hour after work. This is something you can do virtually. You can even add virtual backgrounds.
VIRTUAL SCAVENGER HUNT
Because you will not be able to actually hide items for your team to find physically you can create a list of items they have to find in their homes.
Lifesize has a blog called, Our 15 Favorite Virtual Team-Building Activities to Boost Remote Team Cohesiveness. This blog has a lot of different ideas for virtual team building activities that you can use for your company.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio, video and security camera installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team (License #804783). One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.
Conference Call Lighting
Since the coronavirus pandemic started people who could work from home have. Which means that video conferencing has become the solution to not being in the office. Most of the people who have had to start working from home were not used to video meetings and now some of them are experts. The major part that is disregarded for video calls is the lighting.
There are four very common lighting issues; backlit, harsh shadows, overblown, underlit.
BACKLIT
Backlit lighting is the process of illuminating the subject from the back. Meaning that the lighting instrument and the viewer face each other with the subject in between them. It creates a glowing effect on the edges of the subject, while other areas are darker.
HARSH SHADOWS
Harsh shadow lighting has too much light on one side. Meaning that the light will create a shadow on the subject. Harsh lighting could be direct lighting or lightning from a lamp that has no covering.
OVERBLOWN
Overblown lighting is the result of too much light meaning that the subject is practically white (there are no details in the highlight at all).
UNDERLIT
Underlit lighting is the result of not enough light meaning that the subject is dark.
Unfortunately, most of the time the lighting is backlit. Lousy lighting can interfere with the participants clearly seeing one another. That is why it is essential to have proper lighting for your conference calls. When looking for lighting solutions for video conferencing you should keep a few things in mind; dimmable lights, color temperature control, and adjustable positioning.
Dustin Smith from Lifesize has created a blog about the different video conferencing lighting solutions called, 5 Inexpensive Video Conferencing Lighting Solutions. In the blog Dustin tests out 5 different inexpensive lighting solutions.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio, video and security camera installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team (License #804783). One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.
Is Working from Home the Future?
Because of the coronavirus many people who were used to getting up, getting dressed and going into the office. Now we are creating a new normal by getting up and going to our makeshift offices in our living rooms with children running around screaming and interrupting our conference calls. It’s not just one state or even one country. It’s happening all around the world right now.
Companies and organizations have begun setting up a system for remote (work-from-home) opportunities and arrangements for their new normal, perhaps more companies will follow, and we will have a new normal all around. By setting up a work-from-home system companies are saving money for their businesses.
Not all companies can set up a remote system and that is because their company has to have interactions or experiences as that is part of their service. Unfortunately, these companies will have to get creative in providing their services to their customers.
Technology is essential to be an enabler of this new reality and it is going to have reach certain requirements to keep up with the companies that are going full work-from-home. There are some companies like Lifesize who are making it easier for companies to set up their remote opportunities.
With Lifesize they believe that with the new way of working one thing shouldn’t get compromised and that is security and privacy. Companies will still have to prioritize protecting customer data and communications. Lifesize has stated, “At Lifesize, we will rise to the challenge, adjust our business and product roadmap accordingly, and look forward to supporting our customers through this brave new era of work.”
You can read Lifesize’s full blog post, Beyond the Tipping Point: The Future is Not Just Work From Home, It’s ‘Work From Everywhere’, by following this link.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio, video and security camera installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team (License #804783). One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.
Microsoft Teams Virtual Backgrounds
Are you getting tired of the same old backgrounds for your Microsoft Teams? Do you want to spice up or make your work video calls fun? Well something awesome is happening with Microsoft Teams. They have released an update for the desktop application that will allow you to do a virtual background.
Microsoft Teams has preloaded images that you can change your background to, but you can also use your own images you just have to import them. Crestron has created a how-to on changing your background image on Microsoft Teams.
Check out Crestron’s Blog, “Microsoft Teams Virtual Backgrounds – how to enable and load your own images,” to learn how to change your background.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio, video and security camera installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team (License #804783). One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.