Where to sit in a video conference is not the same as where you would sit in an audio conference or a face-to-face meeting with one other colleague.
In this blog entry on video conferencing blunders 3, we take the issues in video conferencing etiquette a little farther. Here are the other video conferencing blunder stories – story 1 from the Wall Street Journal , story 2 from personal experience.
Our graphic shows three layouts of a video conference where 2 persons are in one room as there may be a third participant via video conferencing. As shown in the far left, the camera must be set to wide angle in order to capture the two participants sitting on opposite sides of the room. These participants appear tiny in the transmitted image since the camera needs to capture and project so much dead space as shown in the arrow at the bottom of the picture.
In the middle circumstance, the participants sit side-by-side with one on the corner of the table. This way, the camera's tighter focal angle as shown by the yellow triangle, permits the two coworkers to fill the screen which should be the goal of the image component of the video conference.
The third example on the right of the above graphic is most commonly associated with the layouts of immersive telepresence systems. Similar to the middle circumstance, participants are able to appear large in the monitor. This is the classic 'TV News' setup and is quite effective.
