We asked our associated partner Patrick von Schenck about his lessons learnt from the past weeks and months. Patrick, educated and raised in the most entrepreneurial environments in the Nordics, is today at JP Cornerstone and responsible for helping Entrepreneurs putting some in place the top talent at the companies of tomorrow. Patrick, a Brit in his soul despite his surname, naturally took on a bit of humorous angle to our question and gave us five essential tips on how to excel in video conferencing.

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Five mysteriously overlooked tips for successful video conferencing

Although, since the beginning of the Corona epidemic, articles on ”do’s” and ”don’ts” of video conferencing have spread almost as fast and uncontrolled as the virus itself, the advice given tend to focus on the basics, such as muting your microphone while not speaking or hiding your vodka bottles.  

People like you, however, striving for much higher standards than the hoi polloi, need to keep some additional, much more crucial rules in mind.

1)    Pimp your bookshelf. Albeit as obvious as the advice already mentioned, too many video meeting participants ruin their social rank and perhaps career, by letting the camera reveal the sub-par content of their home office or living room bookshelves. Dan Brown and Jackie Collins out, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Hayek in. Replace Hayek with Marx if he plays better with your meeting’s clientele. Or keep it simple and go for Encyclopedia Britannica. Its 32 volumes should be enough to cover even a wide-angle view from side to side.

2)    Make yourself heard. You are an important person. You have important things to say. Make sure those things get heard. Do not settle for a mid-tier computer with a mid-tier sound card and a mid-tier microphone. Only mid-tier people do. And make sure the speakers do not merely cover the 0-100% range. Demand at least 110%.  

3)    Shave. Although some of you perhaps did not watch the Nixon vs Kennedy 1960 TV-debate, you have all heard about the disastrous result of Richard Nixon’s prominent five o'clock shadow. A clean shaved Nixon would have won the election hands down. Barred by the constitution to stay president for more than eight years, “Tricky Dick” would then have been out of the White House long before the Watergate-scandal even had a chance to emerge, sparing us the never-ending avalanche of films, books etc about the event. So unless you are running a highly creative ad agency, or are addressing your fellow jihadi mates, use that razor for what it was made for.

4)    Involve your children. Unlike the Nixon – Kennedy debate, odds are very short on you having seen the two adorable children strolling into the home office of Robert Kelly, while he was being interviewed by BBC about some totally uninteresting topic that we have since long forgotten about. But we will never forget Professor Kelly and his kids, nor his panicked-looking wife. Instructing your children to enter at the right moment of your meeting, singing hymns of praise for their father/mother (you), will not only give your conference participants something cute to remember, it will also strengthen your probably slightly tarnished image when it comes to being perceived as a good and caring parent, or at least a human being.

5)    Involve your butler. Speaking of odds being short, the likelihood of your neighbour been laid off during the crisis is almost as great as it happening to you. He should thus have both enough time and financial needs to accept a non-camera role as your butler. Having a waistcoat-dressed middle-aged man appearing in the doorway, uttering discreetly yet very audible: “Sorry to interrupt Sir, but your foie gras is ready”, will ensure that the meeting’s other participants  will not look down on you ever again. At least until they happen to be in another video conference, where your neighbour takes part, and you play the butler.

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