Remote meetings stories

[metropolis_4]

I’m sure a lot of us have at least one good story since these became such a common thing the past few years!


I was working a contract with a bank and had a remote meeting with some bank execs to present some work to them. With this client we’d never turned on cameras for these meetings, but this time one of the top guys turned his on so all his subordinates followed him. So I had no choice but to turn mine on as well.

This exec was wearing a really expensive well tailored 3 piece suite, a big Rolex, jewelry, his chair is oak and leather, behind him are book shelves filled with leather bound books…

I had just crawled out of bed, my hair was sticking out everywhere, I’m wearing a Mickey Mouse T shirt and sweat pants, and behind me was a basement wall with a Beatles poster and a shelf with my Lord of the Rings PEZ dispensers

 

[fretworn]

his chair is oak and leather, behind him are book shelves filled with leather bound books…

… that he never read. (Fify)

 

[laxu]

Other than some adorable cats making an impromptu appearance, I haven't seen anything spicy on video meetings.

I did once end up strumming an electric guitar on my lap while having a mic on though. It was a boring meeting where I didn't have the need to say anything but a few words and mostly just listen. Didn't have a camera on or anything. Just forgot to mute the mic.

I apologized and that was that, so no juicy ending.

 

[Jarick]

There's nothing more nerve wracking than someone accidentally leaving their camera on.

I was in person at my company for 15 years before Covid, then working from home full time since the first lockdowns. It's been pretty good overall since I work in software development / project management and it makes a lot of sense just to do remote meetings.

Because I work from home my work desk is also my music space, so I'm always screwing around with a guitar. I've definitely accidentally played or tuned guitars without muting once or twice. I also had to take all my guitars off my wall and put them on a side rack to avoid background distraction for video calls.

There was one time I had to take a call from my car and accidentally toggled the video on so gave everyone a tour of my garage and roof of my car. Not the best, but could have been worse.

Also I get interrupted by kids or pets sometimes. My youngest daughter comes home from school and likes to find me and give me a hug. It's very sweet but often overlaps with camera on 1:1 calls with my boss. Another time I was presenting out to company execs and my dog nudged open the sliding doors of my office behind me, which was kind of funny. Or I've had a cat jump on my desk and scare me with a headset on.

 

[TravisG406]

I was hosting a webinar with my FM3 as my audio interface. I had a SM7b connected to input 1 via a Shure A85F transformer and had muted input 1 after doing my part. I did not realize that Windows grabbed all outputs and was running the DI signal through even though the input was muted. They heard some low music in the background and I was caught and had to make apologies - luckily it was really low volume and we could edit it out for the recorded version

 

[FuzzyAce]

I bet Toobin could share a few stories?