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LEARN MORESmart Approaches to Working From Home with Logitech and Zoom
Videos
To help workers adapt to working from home and the technology they will need to use to keep in touch with colleagues, Nelson, who manages the video collaborations strategy for Logitech across Australia and New Zealand and Don Kerr, Channel Sales Manager – APAC at Zoom Video Communications hosted a webinar.
The webinar looked at working from home with Logitech and Zoom and provided five key takeaways for businesses and their workers:
- Working from home is a lifestyle that you need to adapt to
- Separating work and home is important
- Finding useful tips for WFH
- Use Zoom securely
- Video environments are customisable
We explore all of the above in more detail for how those now working from home can be as productive and happy as possible.
Kristy Leclerc:
And share screen. There we go.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for logging in and joining the webinar today: Working from Home with Logitech and Zoom, Ask Us Anything.
My name’s Kristy, I’m the Business Marketing Specialist for Logitech, and I’ll be the moderator today. We have a special guest here as well, Kobe, my dog. She’ll be coming in and out of the meeting, I’m sure.
I just wanted to start quickly with some quick housekeeping:
- You’ll see at the bottom of your screen a little Q&A icon. If you have any questions, can you please type your questions and submit them through the Q&A icon, and try and avoid the chat icon to ask your questions. If you do it through Q&A it’s much easier for us to get to all of your questions and keep tabs on that.
- Also, when you joined you may have heard it saying that this is being recorded. This is just for marketing purposes so that if anybody’s missed this – that we can share this with them and that they could re-watch this. We can’t see your faces so your faces will not be in the recording, so don’t worry about that.
And just with saying all of this, I’ll get Nelson from Logitech and Don from Zoom to introduce themselves. Nelson, if we’ll start with you, please.
Nelson:
Thanks, Kristy. Good morning, everyone. It’s great to have you join us this morning. We’re very excited to have this opportunity to share with you – in the current climate – some tips and tricks, and give you an opportunity to ask us, Don and I, who are, I guess, veterans in video conferencing now, some questions around best practices and how to make the most of the video time you’re doing, which has probably increased significantly.
I manage the video collaborations category for Logitech across Australia and New Zealand. Yeah, so I’m looking forward to answering your questions today.
Don Kerr:
And hi, everybody. Don Kerr, I’m from Zoom. Based in Sydney in Australia, obviously. Been in the collab UC space or … Thanks, Nelson, yes a veteran, for a while. It’s interesting when you get to be classed a veteran, isn’t it? And across various [areas], mainly vendor in the UC space, and had the experience of working from home or being home-based in some different roles.
Actually, the last organization I was with, I was there for eight years and was home-office based [and] out on the road a lot. So I have had some experience over time of how to get yourself set up, some of the disciplines, etc that we’ll be able to share with you today as well.
But I manage our channel business for Asia-Pacific at Zoom. I’ve been with the organization just coming on 18 months now. So, yeah, keen to answer questions, provide any tips and tricks, and also I’ll be able to point you to some really good resources that Zoom have to help you figure out what’s the best way – whether it’s personal, business, or larger corporate use.
Nelson:
Cool. So I thought before we get started and start answering all your many questions, which we’ve already had some of you submit your questions prior to the call and we really appreciate that – gave us an opportunity to prepare for those answers. But I wanted to share some things around maybe your scenario today. So let’s think about what you do and how potentially you can, I guess, relate to a couple of these slides that I want to share. [And] give us something to laugh at as well.
So I’m going to share my screen and then I will get into a couple of these slides. Okay.
Okay. So I’m going to share this screen here. Going to present. All right. If you guys can let me know once you can see. Don, we’re good? Perfect.
Don Kerr:
Yeah.
Nelson:
So, obviously the various people that are working from home, where we come from different backgrounds, whether it be – and also different industries in which we work – and we’ve been required to do video. And the company has created these slides as a method to, I guess, relate: how are you, and how do you, I guess, can relate to these people and you’re probably one of these people at home doing that. So I’m going to share some things here, just some fun things.
Working from home, I guess especially if you have children, or you have a spouse, or you have pets. Kristy, every time we jump on a call with Kristy she’s got her dog in the background and he’s fun to watch. He’ll just run around in the background, and partly that is that, you know, they still want to interact with you while you’re on a video call. How many people can relate to that? I’m sure a number of us can.
A lot of us are now either going … as a parent are having to support our children through remote learning, and some of us are teachers having to now teach via video. And that can be daunting because you don’t get that face to face, that interaction, that you normally would in a classroom environment. So I’m sure many of you on this call understand this scenario at the moment.
More and more people – because of the fact that they are in isolation – means they’re actually starting up old hobbies, or using their existing hobby to create content that allows them to express themselves via video. And I’m sure we’ve all seen this little clip down here in the bottom right hand corner, of a gentleman who was being interviewed on TV and his lovely children decided to come in during the interview. I’m sure we all can appreciate that as parents and having children, it’s finding that space where you can have that time to do your calls and so forth.
Keeping the children entertained: obviously, this is a hard thing as a parent. Not only are you supposed to do your work, but you’re also supposed to try to in some way entertain your children, and we’re finding that many parents are having to become very creative. And I see a lot of my friends share a lot of great stuff of what they’re doing at home.
All of us now have home offices, and, to be honest, many of us – apart from Don, and I and Kristy, we’re used to working from home – many people don’t have that home office set up. Many people don’t have the ability to engage on a home …
Sorry. You would not believe this. I’ve got a delivery. Give me one moment. This is terrible. Give me one moment. Don, if you want to take a few seconds.
Don Kerr:
Yeah, yeah. I’ll take that in because it segues a good timing at any point, but yeah, just I think as something I’ve experienced and learnt over a number of years of working from home – initially, in my background I spent a number of years at Microsoft, and that’s where my work from home journey started. They offered a really good flexible working environment as well. But getting that set up correct, I started just working off the kitchen table initially, but moving towards having, you know, whether you’re using a stool as your standing desk. Whether it’s … looks like a delivery box from Amazon there. I haven’t ever tried the ironing board trick, but certainly some of those ways is just getting somewhere where you’re comfortable, where you can sit and work for periods of time at home. And whether your home office is a corner in your bedroom, whether it is you’ve been doing it for a while as I’ve got … I can quickly turn off my virtual background for a second. I’m literally in our spare bedroom – that’s set up as my home office.
But being able to have somewhere where, yeah, you’re comfortable, just like in the office yourself, you can spend a period of time, you can focus. But I think also, around some of that [is] that your makeshift home office is as much about mentality too. So building the discipline in your own ‘how you approach work from home’.
You know, I joke with my wife at times. I’ve got an espresso machine at home, I’ll make myself a long black in the morning down in the kitchen, and as I walk out just for me mentally I’ll say, “See you. I’m off to work.” Even though I’m literally going up a flight of stairs to go into the spare bedroom, but it’s that mental transition I find gives me the switch on in the morning. You know?
Nelson:
Yeah.
Don Kerr:
I’ve been sitting around on the phone all morning, probably checking email, but then at the end of the day also being able to say, “Right, I’m finished.” I may actually shut my laptop down, I’m going to walk out of the spare office, and I make sure I’m mentally and as well as physically closing the door, and it gives me a break at the end of the day. So a couple of tips from my experience.
Nelson:
Absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. And one of the things, obviously, it’s going to happen, distractions at home office, right? A perfect case. I had a delivery knock at the door and you’re on a video call. It happens. That’s the life that we’re living today. Also, just quickly … Oops. Sorry just going back again. So it stopped for some reason.
So life from home. Our life has changed. Let’s face it. We’re now having to celebrate milestones, birthdays, anniversaries via video, but on the flip side of that, we’re probably engaging with some people that we maybe haven’t engaged with and connected with for a long time because of the changes that we’re actually in today.
Improvising at home. I think this is interesting. I’ve got a lot of friends that are fitness people, and the things that they’re coming up with to keep fit. Utilizing household goods to keep themselves fit, and that’s – and I’m sure a number of you guys are doing that as well.
And also showing support. I think this is really good. I think what video is able to do is actually to bring community together, and it’s about taking the focus off ourselves, and being more outwardly-focused and I think video has shown that the ability to show support to others, and we think about those that are on the front line and things like that, video can enable us to engage in community efforts.
Playing from home. Obviously, this is a fun one. Working for Logitech, we’ve got our gaming which is our Logitech G range. That category is going through the roof. People are buying gaming products more than they ever have to entertain themselves at home, and it’s not just one demographic. It’s young, middle-aged, older people all getting into video gaming. People like this little fellow here with their child, you know? You’re spending more time with your children than you probably ever have before.
Then finally … I think that’s the last one. That is the last one. So I’ll stop sharing there. So that’s just to get us started. Obviously, I’m sure many of you can fall into one of those, and many of those, scenarios. Let’s get into some questions now. Kristy, if you want to share with us some of … Let’s ask one question to get us started, and Don and I can go from there.
Kristy Leclerc:
Yeah, definitely.
Don Kerr:
And I can probably also just tick over to provide some info around that setup, what we see as being best practices around set up for home, etc. as well. So, yep.
Kristy Leclerc:
Okay, let’s find a question. There was one in here and I know that I know the reason but some people may not.
“Not being able to use virtual backgrounds. What is the-”
Nelson:
Good question.
Kristy Leclerc:
“Why can some people use virtual backgrounds and some people can’t?”
Don Kerr:
Yeah, at a high level, it’s dependent upon the computer power that you’ve got in the laptop or PC that you’ve got at your desk, at home, etc. So that’s the base, simple level answer.
Why do we do it that way? So you need an i7 processor or above as I am running a virtual background, and we do that because we want to preserve the quality of the video and audio experience. So we don’t want your computer, your PC, your laptop, struggling to provide a virtual background, and deliver the audio, and deliver the video, okay?
Now, there is on our support site. I’m just going to quickly share my screen, let me do that. Let me just jump out here. So on the support site of Zoom, if you just do a search there for virtual background. Support.zoom.us, an amazing resource. If you’ve got questions, jump in, just free type what your question is. Most times you’ll be getting answers there. So it gives you an overview around how do you enable virtual background in your client? Whether you’re doing it as an organization, at a corporate layer enabling it, or whether you’re doing it as an individual. But then it gives you the requirements around virtual backgrounds.
So you can see there around a i7 processor, and then there’s some further details. Also, just make sure you’re on the latest version of the Zoom client to make sure that that is enabled for you. If you don’t have a computer processor of that layer then, yeah, you’ll be ticking the box to’ I have a green screen’ and that can be as simple. I have seen people just hang up a temporary clothesline behind just with a green sheet. Just as long as there’s a single solid color behind you then the virtual background will be able to work as well.
Nelson:
And we were talking about this bit, Don, earlier. So the virtual backgrounds are fantastic, and you can have a serious very corporate background like Don does or I keep mine secret and I bring it out when I … just to have a bit of fun with the team. Let me show you what my virtual background looks like, and it might freak some people out. So that’s my virtual background, wait for it. So this is really simple. You can be as creative as you like with your virtual background. I recorded this video with – my virtual background – with the Logi Capture app just using our webcam, and then Zoom does all the rest. Zoom does it all. You just upload it and then it will loop it through.
So you can have as much fun, you can be as creative as you like and it doesn’t have to be so serious, you know? Obviously, corporate maybe it has to be. But if you’ve got a small business and you want to engage and have some fun with your attendees, then play around with that. It’s a great option. So I’m going to stop it because I think it freaks a number of people out, having me pop out every few minutes.
Don Kerr:
Yeah. Yeah. And another resource to share with you if you’re heading down the path of doing virtual backgrounds – and I’ll share some info – Let me get our mics out of the road from Esther. So if you’re on LinkedIn, if you want to jump on LinkedIn and do a search Esther Yoon. Esther’s one of our product marketing leads in San Jose at head office, and she’s a great presenter. She produces some really amazing content that you can learn a lot from, etc, but one post she put up about a month ago was around some architectural magazines, etc, publishing some virtual backgrounds to use. So the link she had off there is how do you actually go through and set up the virtual background, and just different really nice settings you can have that you can change around and play with.
So Esther’s got a lot of great resources there. Both that virtual background layer, but then in terms of working from home. So if you have your own business, if you employ people and everyone’s working from home, or you’re part of a team in a larger organization, then she’s written some posts around … This one in terms of maintaining that sense of culture, even through to some community-style initiatives, so in the office, how do you do themed days? Which our teams tend to do on Fridays, etc. How can you set up virtual lunch and learns for your team and use Zoom to provide the element through to that?
And then she’s got another one there around if you’re new, and I’ve got a few slides from Esther that I can show in a moment, around how do you get your set up? What sort of technology and components should you have around that as well? So, yeah, do a search on LinkedIn for Esther Yoon. Y-O-O-N, and have a look through the information that Esther has posted there as well.
Nelson:
I follow her and I get all my … I knew about virtual backgrounds because of Esther and that’s how I jumped on it straight away. So, no, I totally agree. Guys, if you are looking to learn more about the best practices from Zoom, jump on those great resources, follow Esther Yoon for sure.
Don Kerr:
Yeah.
Nelson:
One of the other things that is important is, obviously, working from home is the environment that you’re [in] and the equipment that you’re utilizing. This is not about Logitech trying to sell you a product. It’s about understanding that certain products, certain devices, may not be up to the capabilities to be able to allow you to present yourself in your best manner. So Logitech do have some best practices and we do have a variety of products that enable you to … I use, myself, my Logitech BRIO webcam here, I also do have our Logitech headset if I want to be more private. If I do have people at home and I only want to hear the audio myself, I do have a headset myself. Tools like the Logitech Spotlight. You saw me ‘spotlight’ something on the presentation. If you’re a teacher and you want to be able to point at things on the presentation you’re showing, spotlight things, I encourage you to have a look at the Logitech Spotlight. It allows you to do more than just share a screen and just share the content. It can be a bit more interactive with the spotlight.
So there’s some best practices; we can share you some links as well from the Logitech website as well, but what I think is important is that Zoom does the software layer very well. They do some fantastic software layer that now allows the video, the audio, and the content to be shared without chewing too much of your bandwidth, which is important, right? And so our products just give it that little bit more of a boost to ensure you’re looking your best and you’re presenting your best on any call. Perfect, what’s the next question, Kristy?
Kristy Leclerc:
So there’s a few questions coming through about, obviously with what’s been happening Zoom is very popular and people obviously just want to know about privacy. I know that there’s been a lot of it lately.
“Where can people find and keep track of up to date information about this [privacy]?”
Don Kerr:
Yeah, sure. Let me just share my screen again and we can get some resources across, Kristy, to you for some of these, but certainly as with the current situation with COVID-19 and more and more people working from home, the use cases that we’re seeing for Zoom have changed dramatically from being … we’ve predominantly been a business collaboration application and where businesses have IT teams that can set up and configure etc.
So if you’re wanting to keep on top of what we’re doing, what’s real about what’s being spoken in the press, etc, the first point to go to would be the Zoom blog. So just blog.zoom.us. That is where we will be providing all of the updates around what’s changing in the product, questions that have been asked, etc, and every Wednesday US time, Eric, our CEO and founder, is holding a webinar where he does a live Q&A webinar. It tends to be about I think three or four o’clock in the morning Australian time. So most of us are in bed, but that is then published back up.
So you can see that around ‘update on our security plan’, etc. But in terms of resources that are available, there’s privacy and security information for you. So it provides, if you’re a teacher, best practices for securing your classroom. I’ll come back to this ‘secure your Zoom meeting’ reference because it’s probably the best one to look into. And there have been some changes we’ve made over the last few weeks on the product itself to surface for you as a user how you secure your meetings, and as a host how you’re doing it.
So let me just jump into the e-book that’s available. So if you do a search for securing your Zoom meetings you’ll find this PDF that gives you good best practices around securing your meeting. Whether you’re on our basic plan or whether you’re up on an enterprise plan. It doesn’t matter. So all of those are there. So one like Kristy had done for the webinar today that we’ve had there. This has always been in the product is Waiting Room. For the basic end users who are now on a single pro license, this has been turned on by default for you, and it’s really like when you’re in the office and you go to have a meeting with someone in a meeting room in the office, you’ll wait outside if someone else is in there that’s not your meetings. So we do it the same way. So turn on a waiting room. You can then admit people into your Zoom meeting as they come into the waiting room. You can see who they are and you can allow them in. So make sure that you’ve got that turned on, make sure that your organization’s got that turned on. That’s the starting point for us.
Nelson:
And just on that, Don.
Don Kerr:
And you can-
Nelson:
Sorry, just on that. One of the things that we’ve seen a couple of questions come through around yoga teachers, around teaching to students and so forth, and people waiting and saying, “Well, how do I make sure everyone’s on the call?” And I think this is a great tool that has now been opened up as Don said to all licenses. So utilize this because it will definitely help you to ensure that as a host you’re getting the most out of your students as they come in. It doesn’t matter what type of student they are.
Don Kerr:
Yeah, so you can see on the left hand … The attendees, someone joining your meeting is going to have a view saying, “Please wait. The host will let you in shortly.” You can customize some of what the meeting room or the waiting room, sorry, looks like. As a host, you’ll then see the people coming through and you can choose to admit, or if someone’s disrupting your meeting you can actually also then remove them from the meeting.
So in that, if you’re a teacher you’ll know who your students are. If you’re a yoga teacher you may send out a calendar invite, because we can certainly integrate with Outlook, with Google Calendar. You’ll know who are the people that have accepted that invite and you’ll be able to let them in.
The other thing that we do encourage you to do is if you’re doing … say in that yoga teacher scenario, inside of Zoom we do have this element called a personal meeting ID. We actually strongly encourage you to use the random generated meeting IDs, okay? So just use those and if you’re a teacher, a yoga teacher, a music teacher, all of those sorts of scenarios, don’t be publishing your meeting ID out on social media, et cetera., It’s just the same way we wouldn’t generally publish our mobile number out on Facebook just in general for people. So we encourage you to do that.
Nelson:
That’s a great tip.
Don Kerr:
Right. Second element is around passwords. We have, again, for the basic and single pro users, turned on require a password. It’s always been there, we’ve now flipped it to being on by default. Again, when you schedule a Zoom meeting form your Zoom client and you send that invite out, we’ll help to embed that for you to make it easier for your users, but absolutely again don’t put the password there and as we wouldn’t with any other software we’re using, even our banking scenario, we don’t share our passwords around. Similar scenario.
Okay, so there are some good resources in this and then it also goes into once you’re in a meeting how do you go about keeping secure? So there’s been a change, it’s about two weeks ago we released an update to the client that now in the client itself – and let me just expand that out a bit – you’ll see that there is now a security button at the bottom when you are the host. If you’re just attending a meeting you won’t see it, but as the host or organizer of the meeting, you will see this. And what it will give you the capacity inside of the meeting is to define what the participants can do. Can they share a screen? Maybe if you’re a teacher, you don’t want your students sharing their screen and you want to turn off the in-meeting chat. So you just tick those two items, click on them, those tick boxes will disappear.
The other thing, if you’re teaching again, or if it’s a office meeting you’re having, once everybody’s there you can actually go up to the top item and lock the meeting. So just like in an office, everyone’s in the meeting, okay, let’s close the door. That’s what we’re doing around those elements.
So there’s some tips there around using the new security icon that’s been surfaced, and there’s some description of each of those through there.
So that’s one document I’d encourage you all to go and look for. Kristy, I’ll share the link to it as well that you can do a follow-up to the attendees.
Nelson:
Yeah, Don. I think what we’ll do is all these great links that you’re referencing today, we will give them all to Kristy, and Kristy will email all the information, all the links that we’re discussing today, to all the attendees.
Don Kerr:
Okay. Let me stop sharing the screen.
Nelson:
Next question. Sorry.
Kristy Leclerc:
So we have multiple questions, obviously, with what’s happening people are using video conferencing and Zoom in all new ways. We talk about the yoga, we talk about people who are teaching music, people who are at church, gyms, all of this type of stuff, and some of those need better sound quality, and some of them like to have music playing in the background – especially for gyms and yoga. And they find that it keeps being a bit clunky and it’s cutting out.
I believe that there’s been an update in regards to that to help some of these people out or why that happens?
Don Kerr:
Yeah, and some of that. So there is the capacity when you’re the host of a meeting – so if you’re teaching a class and you want some music streaming in underneath it. Actually, let me see if I’m going to be able to do it. Yeah, I can. So let me just share my screen here, and you’re all going to see what I’m seeing as a panelist in the meeting now and everyone … I’ve got to say it was great to see everyone coming from all around the country. There was even someone from Daylesford in Victoria. I got very jealous when I saw that pop in.
But to do that, how would you share music underneath? So you go down to the share screen button down the bottom, you’d click on that. Let me bring that across onto the right window. I’m running two screens here. So you see that generally, it’s going to give me the capacity of different apps that I can share, but if I go into ‘advanced’ then I can click on music or computer sounds only, right? If I choose that, then I could throw up Spotify and there’s Nelson’s favorite song. So I could choose that, share, and now I can grab Spotify.
Nelson:
Thank you.
Don Kerr:
Throw some music up underneath it, okay? So that’s how you’d … Let’s get away from that … that’s how you’d go through … and then up the top here I’m just going to choose to stop sharing that. That’s how you go about doing it.
Again, probably worth jumping on support.zoom.us and doing a search for what’s the best way to set up streaming sound? Sometimes issues around glitches, etc. Is it the upload speed on the internet connection you’ve got? If you’re going to be teaching and doing something like that, really encourage you to shut down all the other apps on your laptop.
Nelson:
Yup.
Don Kerr:
Just gives Zoom, and your music, and your camera, and that the best possible opportunity to deliver an awesome experience for your classes.
Nelson:
And I think just to add to that, a lot of people will add, like, set a speaker beside them, or they’ll put a speaker or they’ll have their home stereo blaring in the background. Bear in mind, that the microphone on whether it be your laptop or the BRIO may not … There’s probably going to be some form of delay and, depending on like Don said, your upload speeds, it may not be able to handle that. Whereas if you do it through Spotify and through the app, that means Zoom’s going to be controlling the quality of service across the whole video, audio, content sharing, and the music going out. So be mindful that people playing or sitting like a UE Boom beside you or something and blaring that, trying to … You may not have the best experience with that.
Don Kerr:
Yeah, yeah. While you’re talking about that, Nelson, I’ll just share a couple of slides from what Esther had delivered around working from home set up. So, I won’t go into full-screen presentation screen, but there’s a couple of tips and tricks for how to maximize – and I saw there were some questions around how do you get the best headshot set up and resolution? Etc. Nelson, I might let you talk about some of the Logitech software that helps with that, but from a setup perspective, a couple of tips and tricks.
At the present point in time, it’s pretty close to what I’m using in my home office. I actually jumped on Amazon and found this little LumeCube. It’s just a USB powered light that I have sitting similar to this on the top of my monitor, and that is just projecting forward to my face. So it’s front lighting some of my face. So that’s one element to do. These are US dollar prices from Esther, but I think it was around $90, something like that. All of these now in our current, how do you put them through? Are they a tax deduction? Is work going to help pay for them as well?
Certainly, a good quality webcam is something that we see as being really important to maximizing that video experience for Zoom. And then, if you’re not in a closed, quiet office environment, then getting yourself a good comfortable headset, [and] good noise-canceling microphone, because that’s then what you’re transmitting and that’s – in one sense – as important as what people hear from you.
So things like the Logitech Zone, [I’ve] got one sitting on the side here. I’ve got a Poly speakerphone that I’m using at the moment. Some of those sorts of scenarios. And an example of why it becomes important, just with that lighting, etc, generally something like the Logitech BRIO, the 920/930s, will give a better definition as it’s broadcast into the meeting than if you’re just using your standard in-built laptop camera – and the same goes for your laptop mic and speakers, [which] can be a little hard, especially as you get a bit of distance away from them. So that’s just a couple of tips and tricks there from a set up perspective that I thought I’d share with you as well.
Nelson:
Yeah, perfect. Yeah, absolutely. And be mindful, especially if you’re a yoga teacher or you are a fitness teacher where you’re stepping further away from your camera, the laptop is going to struggle to get you and so it is important.
The benefit of some of our webcams – we have software called our Logitech Camera Settings, and you can then with that – with a Logitech Camera – actually then change your fields of view. So you can have it very narrow like I have it or I can go widescreen, or I can go smaller, or I can go all the way full to widescreen.
Now, the webcams also have microphones that are designed … like the BRIO that I’m using today, it’s beamforming. So the mic is actually looking … is not looking, listening for my voice, and actually the beam is … The audio beam is beaming directly to me listening for my voice. So when you think about as a yoga instructor or fitness instructor, or anything like that where you’re going to be stepping back three, maybe four, metres away, your laptop webcam will not pick up that resolution very well and it will struggle. Especially around lighting. So the BRIO has HDR, which if you have an iPhone or a Samsung kind of thing it has, [it’s] software that’s actually ensuring the light is good. You’re looking your best through the webcam on the video.
So a really good tip is make sure that you invest in something like a webcam, the Logitech website – Kristy will send a link with that – to have a look at what available webcams there are for you for your specific scenario and what you’re doing at home.
Next question, Kristy.
Kristy Leclerc:
Unmute. So this is just a quick one,
“I’m about to run a Zoom meeting for a water cooler society. There’s about 50 to 80 members to attend. There are three people doing demos. Do I need to make them co-hosts?”
Don Kerr:
So if you’re just running a Zoom meeting, no you don’t. You can set your meeting up so participants can share screen, etc. In a webinar scenario as we are now, the difference is the presenters are … they have audio, video, and share screen capability, the attendees don’t. You guys are seeing us, you’re hearing us, you’re asking questions via text, via Q&A, but in a meeting scenario, yeah, all the attendees – if you choose to – can share content, can chat. And remember I showed before the security icon that’s new on the bottom panel of the Zoom client, that’s where you can define either particular attendees can share, or none, etc.
So, yeah, and 50 to 80 participants on a meeting are easy for our platform to handle as well, and that’s one of the benefits we see – and especially for external parties joining in – of where Zoom just becomes an easier platform for customers to take up and to leverage than some of the other platforms that are out there in the marketplace. They’re doing wonderful jobs in the scenarios that they’re built for, but just that ability to invite people who are not necessarily part of your organization or your corporate domain, or corporate infrastructure, becomes a lot easier with Zoom.
And then especially as you’re interacting with people that may be in different countries. Just the architecture of how Zoom has been built means we can deliver that high-quality video and audio experience around the globe. I have someone who’s just joined me in our team in India on Monday, he’s based in Mumbai and they’re all in lockdown. Just as we’re in isolation here, but you imagine trying to do that in a city like Mumbai which has 25 million people in it – there’s a challenge for a government. But he’s working at home, on his laptop, on Zoom. He’s just plugging into our data centre in India, I’m connecting into our data centre in Australia, and the Zoom backbone is taking care of what’s the right frame rates and bandwidth that should be utilized so both of us can have video on. The guy that’s, whoop, over that shoulder. The guy that’s over my left shoulder working hard away in the background, on my virtual background, that all still works but around the clock.
Kristy Leclerc:
Going through some. This is an interesting one:
“I’m showing more room than head in my room set up and via my webcam, is there a right or wrong way around this?”
I have that preset on my BRIO because you can have it wide, or – is it 90 degrees?
Nelson:
Yeah.
Kristy Leclerc:
I just like to include Kobe to look at.
Nelson:
Yeah.
Kristy Leclerc:
Is there a right or wrong way?
Nelson:
Absolutely. So, look, and that’s a really good question. Your laptop that you get, just to start off. Just forget about working from home for the moment. Your laptop will show, depending on the camera that’s in-built into the laptop, it will show predominantly a 90 degree field of view, which is quite wide when you’re sitting quite close. And that’s why Logitech have created the Camera Settings app. That allows you to have three settings. That is 65 degrees – that’s what I’ve got it on right now, which is the most closest you can have it, and for most webinars and video calls that I’m on personally, I have it on the very narrow field of view. 65 degrees.
The next step up from that is 75 degrees, which is a little bit wider, it will fill in a bit more. And then you’ve got the widescreen, which is your traditional 90 degree field of view. Obviously, it’s called – and we’ll send a link to the Logitech Camera Settings app in the email that we send out to all attendees today, but yeah, with every … Please download that, because then you can also change certain aspects of the webcam and autofocus and things like that on the BRIO and so forth. So definitely, there you go.
Don Kerr:
And I’ve just turned my on. So mine’s jumped in a bit further. So yeah, that’s … It is, it’s a good bit of software for when you’re wanting to be in close. I think it’s getting a setup that’s going to provide that closest to life experience of you actually being in an office and in a meeting with somebody, that’s probably the right way to focus around that. And not providing too much distraction around the background. So with video virtual backgrounds, for me, has been trying to pick one that does give the impression that I’m in the office, but not so much movement that it’s very distracting for people who are in the meetings with me. One colleague who has a virtual background of sitting in the cockpit of an F-16 Fighter taking off –
Nelson:
Oh, geez.
Don Kerr:
I mentioned yesterday, Nelson, your little poke your head around the corner. After a little while got a bit distracting so …
Nelson:
Exactly. And that’s a great point. The fact is, is that when … You’ve got to understand who you’re going to be presenting to. Not think about how good you look – and everyone’s self-conscious about how they look, I’ve got blemishes on my face, you know – but it’s not about how good you look, it’s more about what your participants are going to see. And you want to give them the best experience of engaging with you to get the most interaction, to get the most connection. Think about what they’re going to see. So I know you might not want to be on video and therefore, you want to be as far back as you can so they can’t see your hair looking terrible or whatever. What’s more important is what are your participants going to see? And if you’re trying to educate, if you’re trying to communicate a message, then it’s probably better to be in as close as you can for yourself.
As Don said, less distractions in the background as possible, and that allows you to have a much more effective time with your participants on the call.
Don Kerr:
I might jump in with one here, Kristy, because there’s been a few people asking … it’s similar to this one – Jerry asks
“I was around a Zoom conference the other day for 10 people. Participants all had a variety of computers. I could see all 10 participants but people who were on tablets reported they could only see four, is that right?”
Yes, it is. But on either an iOS or an Android tablet device, on the mobile app we will show a two by two, but you can actually swipe right and you’ll get the next four people, and swipe right and get the next couple. So it’s not locked, but it just gives you the capacity – or the people on that meeting gives them the capacity – to swipe between those and see the other people that are on it.
But in a desktop environment, so both PC and Mac – The Windows and Mac environment – will actually on a meeting show up to 49 people on the screen. So we’ll do a seven by seven in what we call gallery view. Okay? And again, an example, you know, Zoom our ‘all hands’ quite often is run as a meeting. So we’ll have up to 1,000 people on that. You’ll get 49 in a view and you can just scroll through to see where people are. I mean, it gives you that rich environment when you’re on a large meeting. So I hope that helps for people around the iOS and the tablet question.
Nelson:
And just to add one other comment around the … There was one of the ones that said approximately 10 yoga students, they don’t get to see their students too well.
One of the other views that I personally like is when … it’s called speaker view in a meeting though, not webinar, but in a meeting. So I then drag all the smaller tabs up to the very top of my screen and then I’ll have the individual videos across the top. So you don’t have to have them always down this right hand side, you can move that over. And then that way the main screen, soon as one student starts to speak or you ask them a question you want them to answer, they become the speaker on the total screen. And that allows … there you go. There you go. Don’s got it working right now.
So that’s what I mean. So if you’re a teacher, you don’t want … Obviously, you over at the top and you want to engage and you want to see your students, you change the view there and that allows you within speaker view allows you to then see them in the full screen, and that’s my favorite view that you’ve got right there, Don. That’s the one I opt for..
Don Kerr:
Yeah, so when you’re in speaker view, this should now … as I start taking over … this should eventually flip over. It may not show myself because it’s not going to show me, but if Kristy started speaking then Kristy would surface in the main window, but I still get to see everybody up the top there. Yeah, that’s a good one to roll through, Nelson.
Kristy Leclerc:
Ok.
Nelson:
Next question, Kristy. How are we going for time, Kristy, by the way?
Kristy Leclerc:
We’ve got 10 minutes to go.
Nelson:
Cool. I hope everyone’s finding this helpful, by the way, while you’re finding that question.
Don Kerr:
Yeah.
Nelson:
We’ll try to answer as many questions as we can and try to provide as much content as we can.
Don Kerr:
Yeah, Jenny asked a question around:
“iPad providing the same resources in a meeting as desktop.”
There’ll be some similarity. There’s obviously some resource restrictions that we’ve got on working off a tablet, etc, but certainly, you can share your screen off the mobile client. So if you’re wanting to show some content, I don’t know, show your daughter a TikTok dance that’s new, you know, you can share that off in the mobile client as well. But elements around doing multiple app sharing or bringing in a resource camera or things like that, yeah, some of them will be different.
Kristy Leclerc:
Okay. So these people, they did a webinar and they were struggling to have good sound and picture, and they said the reason was having 1,000 people logging in.
Is this something?
Don Kerr:
So in a webinar … so with Zoom, you’re in a webinar now and as I said before, you can see and hear the presenters but yourselves as attendees can’t talk, can’t turn on video. So that’s the webinar platform. The meeting platform itself, let me start there. Meeting is everybody would be on audio and video, we could all see each other. Kristy would still be the host and control who can do what.
So, yeah, in that scenario, a meeting we can scale up to 1,000 participants. It’s dependent on the plan you’re on, so the basic pro accounts will support up to 100 attendees. Business up to 500, up to 300 sorry. Enterprise up to 500 natively in the plan. You can then add on what we call a large meeting, okay? And that can go up to 1,000.
Now, in the webinar scenario we start at 100 but we can scale up to 10,000 participants in a webinar, okay? So the capacity to go beyond 1,000, absolutely it’s there. They’re paid plans. You can reach out to sales@zoom.us and our team can help you that way.
Nelson:
One of the questions that I’ve noticed as well,
“any tips on dedicated USB type microphones?”
And I think when people are conducting webinars where they’re very much about just communicating a message, not so much engaging, Logitech do have the Blue range. Blue is a fantastic professional microphone which is USB, and they can be plugged in, and then obviously on your Zoom you can actually select– under the audio – you can actually select the Blue mic as an option and then the Blue mic becomes your microphone and then, depending on which webcam you have, that becomes your video.
And obviously, depending on the Blue microphone you use, you know – a friend of mine is a guitarist and a guitar teacher, and he has two microphones. So he has one to play the guitar and one potentially to sing to. Yeah, you can, I believe – correct me if I’m wrong, Don – you can only have one audio and one video feed at any time but you can switch between them on the call, is that correct?
Don Kerr:
I’d have to go back and double-check on the support, but we can … Yeah, so in a meeting you can have … But you can have multiple people sharing content at the same time, right?
Nelson:
Yep, correct.
Don Kerr:
But yourself as an individual, yeah, we’ll be taking one audio and one video. But you can change that in the meeting. So at the moment, I’m using my BRIO. Again, let me just …
Nelson:
Share screen.
Don Kerr:
Let me quickly share my screen. It’s easier. You know, a picture paints a thousand words. So down the bottom here, and there were some people asking questions about,
“Oh, people at the other end can’t hear me really well.” Etc.
So when you come into a meeting, or actually even before you start. In the Zoom client itself, you can go in and test your audio and your video, okay? And it’s a good suggestion to start off with, because we’ll play back to you what we’re hearing from your mic and a sound into your earpiece. So you can just go and test speaker and microphone.
But you can see here that the mic … if people on the other end are having trouble hearing you, my suggestion would be if you’ve got a good quality headset on just go in and make sure it’s using thought versus using the default system mic. The microphone’s really, really critical for that.
From a video perspective, if I had a second video camera set up – and we can support multiple here, I could have four connected in – and maybe I had one pointed at a whiteboard because I wanted to capture some … but I could flip over to that. So I’ll flip to my camera off of the MacBook, and you can see. It’s quite dark and, you know, then I can flick back to the BRIO. So that’s one way you can flip between them.
If you’ve got a content camera, so if you’re wanting to show content. Maybe, again, you’ve got a whiteboard or you’ve just got a pad of an A3 size pad of paper and you’re wanting to sketch something out, you can go into the advanced section and you can grab content from a second camera, and that’s what’s laid down as the screen share. So there’s a couple of options there certainly.
Nelson:
And I think that the content camera is an amazing new feature that’s been added, and I think in the office, when I’m in the office, I’ll utilize the content camera to go to a screen, a separate screen – either a touch panel, or a physical whiteboard – and it’s such a great feature to have where you can switch between the cameras and feed that content into the call. It’s great. Definitely.
Cool. Kristy, any more?
Kristy Leclerc:
This is one.
“Does Zoom integrate with OBS?”
Don Kerr:
What’s OBS?
Nelson:
What’s OBS? Even I don’t know what OBS is, to be honest.
Kristy Leclerc:
Well …
Nelson:
We’ll have to come back on that one.
Don Kerr:
Yeah.
Kristy Leclerc:
Okay. What is another one? There’s a few people obviously asking about the length of their Zoom meetings, so obviously being 40 minutes, how can they do a three hour one and around licensing? Will that be shared in the link that you-
Don Kerr:
I’ll just quickly share now, Kristy, because I did see a few there, and I’m mindful of the time so I’ll show people some of the other resources that I can point them to as well, but let me just quickly share my screen. Get us out of the road.
So from a plan perspective, so, yeah, if you sign up for the basic plan then we don’t have a licensing cost around it. You can have unlimited one to one meetings, but we’ve put a 40 minute cap on those group meetings that you have. If you’re then wanting to run longer meetings, you can certainly jump online, you can go to zoom.us/plans, then the pro license, which is you can see there 21 Aussie a month, then lets you go for meeting durations up to 24 hours. And with that, you also start to get some of our enhanced capability around cloud recording.
So there were some messages there. So you could, in a meeting choose to record it. It will notify people the meeting’s recorded, [and] if they don’t want to be recorded they can choose to leave, but once that’s recorded in the cloud you will then be able to send that recording out, and actually it also provides a transcription of the meeting. So people can search through the transcription, etc. And if you want to, [when] sending that recording out you can actually request that people register to access the recording. So you can put some security limitations around it – you can set it so that they can’t then on-share it, etc. So some of that.
So that would be great for very small businesses, maybe you’re just dipping your toe in the water around it. Then as you’re a larger organization, stepping up to the business plan is really where you’d be looking at. So you see it’s up to 300 participants in a meeting by default, but we then provide you a really rich and robust admin dashboard to give your IT team the ability to troubleshoot into issues. If you want to integrate with your single sign-on engine, be that Google, be it AD, ADFS, AD Azure, Okta, etc, then you can do that as well. So you’re just making it an easier experience for your users.
And while I’m here, let me just give you some tips on resources to go look at. I’ll mention again Esther’s blog or LinkedIn page. Jump on that, certainly follow Esther on LinkedIn, she has some great content. The Zoom blog itself. So if you’re wanting to know what’s happening? What’s changed? What are we working on? etc, then certainly go to blog.zoom.us and that will get you there.
From a support, what resources are around supporting you through the current environment? We do have a specific COVID-19 landing page, and that has got a whole bunch of training resources as well. So how do I get started? Administrator webinar training. It’s a whole bunch of video tutorials that are there, plus links off around privacy and security.
If you’re an educator, what’s best practices? Tips and tricks. Again, more around remote working and effective remote working. How do you host virtual events? Best practice guides, etc. If you’re in the health sector, how could you use Zoom for telehealth? That’s all there.
So that is … I’ll get that link to you, Kristy, so you can send that out as well.
I mentioned the ‘Secure Your Zoom Meetings’ e-book. We’ll get that link out. And then on YouTube, excuse me, we do have a YouTube channel. The Zoom YouTube channel, and there are product overviews. There are how-to videos all up there. And then finally, last resource I’ll say, is support.zoom.us.
Okay? So Esther, the blog, the COVID page, YouTube, support. There’s five things to walk away with.
Nelson:
And just from a Logitech point of view, let me share … we’ve also got some blog information. We’ve got a blog that we also do. So, obviously, we have our Logitech website, dedicated website there. Oops, get that out of the way. We’ve got our Logitech website – and Kristy will provide that – which has all our room systems, webcams, headsets, and so forth all there. Then we have our blog, which is Logitech … Sorry, I’ve now off the top of my head now removed it. It is blog.logitech.com. Once again, you can click on video collaboration, and then it just goes through awesome tips and tricks and so forth around products and so forth as well. So, similar to Zoom, Logitech have very similar resources available, and we will share all these links and those videos as well.
Kristy Leclerc:
Perfect.
Nelson:
There was a question around a lapel mic.
“Does Logitech make a lapel mic?”
Unfortunately, Logitech does not make a lapel mic. I do know of … And I’m trying to remember … I think it’s a ‘Rode’ mic a friend of mine’s been using. Rode have a lapel USB mic. So you can buy a Rode, R-O-D-E, Rode lapel mic, and that will plug into your laptop and utilize USB. Then on the audio as Don showed, demonstrated, you select the audio and then you change the mic to that lapel mic, the USB lapel mic.
So the benefit of Zoom is that you can add any USB input device, such as a microphone or a webcam, and utilize those as your tool to your audio or video.
Kristy Leclerc:
That’s perfect.
Nelson:
Cool.
Kristy Leclerc:
I think that just about wraps us up. I know we got through quite a lot of questions. I know a lot of you still had some questions to be answered, but we did have an hour and we’ve gone just a little bit over. So you never know, maybe with the amount of interest, who knows? We might do another one.
Don Kerr:
Kristy, if we capture all those questions I’m happy to work through with our team and just where we’re able to provide some response back via you guys on those.
Kristy Leclerc:
Definitely. Awesome.
Nelson:
I’ve just noticed. There was a couple of questions regarding stock availability of Logitech products. Look, let me just share some insights. At the moment, prior to this scenario that we’re in, this COVID-19, I had plenty of stock. I had no problems. We forecast every day, [and] I had plenty of stock. Obviously, when Australia and obviously I manage New Zealand, when everybody has gone into basically working from home as a mandate, the demand for our product exponentially grew. And I’m not talking, you know, doubling, I’m talking about 3,000, 4,000% increase in demand. So it has put a strain on our supply. And then think about the scale of it globally, right? So everyone around the world is trying to get our product.
Now, we are getting as much product as we can into the country. Unfortunately, it is taking longer than normal, and bear in mind with flights being canceled and ships not being shipped out of China and so forth, there’s a number of factors that are affecting the ability for us to get stock to you. But please bear with us, as we’re doing our very best to get as much stock into country, both in Australia and New Zealand, to try and fulfill all the various orders that are currently on Logitech and we appreciate the support. And just bear in mind, we are doing our very best to try and get as much stock in the air as quickly as possible for you. So please bear with us, we’re trying our very best to get as much stock to you as possible.
Kristy Leclerc:
Perfect. All righty. Well, I think we will leave it there. Thank you everybody for joining. Thank you, Nelson. Thank you, Don. This has been great, answered a lot of questions. I think it’s answered a lot of questions that people didn’t even know that they had. So, no, great. Thank you very much.
Nelson:
Yes.
Kristy Leclerc:
Catch you all later.
Nelson:
Yeah, thanks, Don.
Don Kerr:
And thank, Logitech, for arranging it. Thanks, Nelson. Thanks, Kristy.
Nelson:
No problems. Take care, everyone.
Adapting to working from home
In order to adapt properly to working from home, it’s important that workers acknowledge the reality of being at home and surrounded by family – and that it’s not always ideal. However, what’s fortunate is that most other people are in the same boat. So, by taking the time to acknowledge this, workers can eliminate unnecessary stress.
Some people will be in the enviable position of having a designated room in the house as a home office, while other workers may have had to make do with a spot at the dining table or in the kitchen. But no matter the setup, the reality is that there will probably be distractions.
By accepting that there will be distractions rather than sweating the small stuff, working from home won’t seem like such an uphill battle.
The importance of separating work and home
When it comes to successfully working from home, workers need a combination of two things. According to Don Kerr, who manages Zoom’s channel business for Asia-Pacific, these two things are:
- a comfortable home office, and
- the right mentality.
Kerr says it’s about
“…building the discipline in your own ‘how you approach work from home [mentality]’.”
For Kerr, this discipline involves things like making his morning coffee in the kitchen, saying goodbye to his family, and walking up the stairs to work in the spare room.
Separating work and home is important for mental health during these uncertain times. By having a routine in place, taking breaks and physically shutting down from work at the end of the day, workers can keep themselves feeling fresh rather than tired and overworked.
Helpful tips and resources
Working from home in the digital age requires workers to use online platforms in order to complete their work. Adapting to these digital means requires patience and the assistance of a few handy tips and tricks.
To get the most out of a versatile platform like Zoom, Don Kerr recommends following Esther Yoon, one of Zoom’s product marketing leads in San Jose, on Linkedin. Some of Esther’s tips include how to set up virtual backgrounds and what technology your home office should have.
Using Zoom effectively
A platform like Zoom has a number of key features that businesses can use in order to hold secure and efficient meetings. It’s important that you familiarise yourself with these features to ensure you are getting the most value out of the platform.
For example, one of Zoom’s most helpful features is the Waiting Room product, which is also – in part – customisable.
Kerr explains that this feature is turned on by default for most users. The waiting room allows you to “… admit people into your Zoom meeting as they come into the waiting room. You can see who they are and you can allow them in.”
Using Zoom effectively and efficiently also comes down to using a personal meeting ID safely and setting up passwords. Kerr strongly encourages the use of randomly generated meeting IDs, and stresses keeping these meeting IDs private. This will help prevent ‘gatecrashers’ from entering your video chats.
Setting up your video environment
The way you set up your video environment should fit the purpose of what you’re doing, rather than how you want to look on camera. This means determining whether or not you need a webcam.
It’s important to note that laptops will show a 90 degree field of vision. Nelson from Logitech notes that Logitech webcams allow you to have three viewing settings – a very narrow field of view, a wider field of view or the traditional 90 degree field of view.
The settings will depend on the purpose of the video. For example, yoga teachers may like a wider field of view in order to appropriately convey the poses and techniques. While someone who is just speaking into the camera may require a different setting.
Music is another important element when it comes to setting up your video environment. People teaching fitness classes over Zoom or teachers wanting to spruce up their presentations may want to add music to their videos.
Instead of playing music through an additional speaker, music can be played through Zoom. By toggling through the advanced settings on Zoom, Kerr says that you can choose to play music from Spotify. Resulting in Zoom playing crisp music along with the rest of the video.
Working from home with Logitech
Working from home doesn’t have to be stressful. By taking the time to acknowledge and accept the realities that come with this arrangement, workers are better positioned to adapt to it. However, adapting to the situation doesn’t mean overworking yourself either.
The next steps towards successfully working from home involve becoming acquainted with technology. Whether it’s using webcams or microphones, the right technology is out there. Speak to a Logitech representative today for assistance with all your home office needs.
With a Masters in Business Marketing, and a 15 year background spanning process management, B2B relationship management and customer facing roles, Kristy has always held an interest in the psychology behind customer choices. As Logitech’s Business Marketing Specialist for the last three years, Kristy has looked after all outgoing and internal marketing objectives, working with external agencies to create a holistic product offering through ads and content. Kristy’s goal is to ensure Logitech is known as a serious player in the collaboration space; not just boardroom suitable, but easy to deploy from wherever work happens. She’s passionate about helping customers identify their next normal through hybrid working spaces to ensure business continuity, and is thrilled to collaborate with her wider team in a company that sees itself as a huge ambassador for working from home.
Kristy Leclerc
VC Marketing Manager, ANZ