The novel coronavirus pandemic has touched many aspects of business in the United States, including how we communicate with our colleagues.
Conference calls on the phone are nice, but the awkwardness of trying to chime into the conversation and talking over someone is frustrating and uncomfortable. Enter: the group video chat.
By now, your company or friends have taken to communicating with one another on Zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, or FaceTime. While you may not want people to see you rocking a top bun or Cast Away-style beard, having that sort of face-to-face interaction can make conducting business easier and provide for better conversation.
Zoom has been a big hit over these last few weeks of quarantine as many have enjoyed playing around with the digital background feature. We found a few that might entertain your coworkers or spice up that digital happy hour.
Zoom’s Help Center provides tips and hints for how to effectively post your background.
Feel like making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs? Hop in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon with our favorite nerf herder, Han Solo, and Chewbacca. StarWars.com has released several other Zoom backgrounds for your use in a galaxy far, far away.
Isolation can make us all question the nature of our realities. Bring yourself back online with this Westworld background, compliments of HBO. They’ve also let users gain access to the Iron Throne, stay corporate at Waystar/Royco, or take a seat at John Oliver’s desk.
In the immortal words of Tom Haverford: “Sometimes you got to work a little, so you can ball a lot.” On your next conference call, “treat yo self” to these Parks and Recreation backgrounds by sitting in Ron Swanson’s office or these other various locations within the Pawnee Parks Department.
While we’re in the mockumentary section of the article, how about placing yourself in Scranton, Pa.?
And, of course, you could always take a page out of the OG isolationists’ handbook and bring your conference call to Wakanda. Marvel also provided a few other backgrounds including tech genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist Tony Stark’s lab.
