My Home Office is My Theater

Disclaimer

This blog is based on my personal experience over the last two years remotely working. In this article I am not specifically recommending or endorsing any particular hardware or software vendor, rather I am simply illustrating the chosen setup that I have in place. So please feel free to use your favorite vendor or version of choice instead

My setup might seem simple to certain people or even sophisticated to others, so this is not an exhaustive challenges/solutions list, and I think we can? crowdsource collectively your challenges and your solutions in the comments for the benefit of all the teleworkers out there to make working from home more productive and fun for us all.

#home #workingfromhome #teleworking #whiteboardanimation #interactivesession #customersuccess #workplacewellbeing #securityawareness #productivity #collaborationtools

Meanwhile?

The Boredom: If you have historically? worked from home or just started recently, one thing I know is that we all have started working increasingly more- over the last two years from home . How many of you have been in those never-ending? boring zoom/teams/webex calls?? Where sometimes your main objective is to not fall asleep listening to the? hypnotizing tone of the presenter rather? than on the main topic being presented. I know for sure that you feel less engaged and less interactive despite all of the meeting app capabilities designed to keep you motivated

Furthermore there are simply some inherent challenges when you work from home that one cannot avoid at any costs, they include:

The place/location:

Prepare yourself for the hard fought negotiations with your partner (if you have one), to obtain the most suitable office space for your so-called “home-office” or like many people I know you may end up in a basement or a storage room as every other space is taken up in the house..?

The Noise:?

You need to constantly deal with noise, no matter what! Let me give you some examples of the main background noise contributors:

• Kids after school or on their school holidays.
• The fan of your dying computer, breathing it’s last breath.
• The typing on your noisy keyboard.
• The breathing on top of your bad mic, that sounds like you're scuba-diving.
• Your ambitious challenge of trying to run two (or more) calls at the same time, while you keep the audio and camera on.
• The constant pop-up notifications of messaging apps? slack, whatsapp, Message, your outlook reminders, etc.

Unattended computers: Sometimes people leave their computers unlocked or share their work computers with their family members and little children think it's a great time to practice their typing skills, not knowing that you are actively working in a company-wide slack channel.

Cameras: People with cameras on, have their own awkward moments. Sitting in your room and someone walks by, yep seen it before, your kids walking past and pretending the camera is set up for them.? The meeting apps’ backgrounds make people appear and disappear especially when they try to show something on their camera. Sometimes those meeting backgrounds don't load properly and your audience can see the state of your messy room.

Screen Sharing: Sometimes you feel it's much easier to share your entire desktop instead of sharing individual applications. Guess what, everyone can see? everything here are some examples:

• Sharing windows that you are not supposed to share like a private thread you have with your colleague about the current call. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes it can be embarrassing.?
• Confidential information > This is a dangerous one for obvious reasons..?
• Telling the world that you have bad patch management and that everyone can see that you are not updating your browser or your OS software. This is bad security practice and may leave your computer vulnerable to a potential security breach (come on it is in red and it says update so please update :) )????

The Theater

The Office Main Parts

Let me introduce you to my setup and iSteve. Best shown in the form of an architectural diagram :).?

• eGPU: Connecting three 4K monitors to your laptop overheats it and slows it down. For this reason I use an external GPU case (Sonnet 750e) with an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT which improves the performance significantly. I have configured the CPU-heavy apps to make? use of the eGPU instead. This makes my laptop quieter than ever.
• Curved 4K Monitors: Curved monitors give me great visibility across all of the apps that I run concurrently. I found Gigabyte G34WQC 144 hz to be very suitable for this setup.?
• Camera: I use an OBSBOT Tiny Camera with face recognition, and a tracker which helps the video stay focussed on me when presenting whilst standing, which I often do..??
• Electric Standing Desk: A must have, to adjust your working height. My electric desk helps me to move around instead of sitting down all day in an unhealthy posture.?
• Conference Unit: I use a Poly 40 unit with echo and noise cancellation. I personally cannot keep a headset on? for a long time as it gets too warm on the ears and gives my headaches, I therefore opt for a headset free setup without sacrificing the sound quality.?
• Whiteboard or iSteve (as my kids like to call it. That was part of the negotiation deal with my kids). It is essentially like a giant iPad, which I use to present content interactively and annotate as a virtual whiteboard. I use this during live sessions, and demos . iSteve is made of the following components: Dell 55 Inch Interactive Touch Screen (C5518QT), OPTIPLEX 7090, and Adjustable Stand.

Welcome to the Show.

About my Place: Personally it was not very difficult for me to settle at my current residence. I am a single dad with two amazing kids (8 and 10 years old). Despite my kids being highly co-operative and nice to their father, I found myself still having to? to negotiate on how my work from home setup was going to operate and where in the house was suitable. My kids colluded and knew exactly how things in the house should be? before entering the family discussion/negotiation. In the end? we reached an agreement that covers the allocation of? office room and the rules that govern how they behave when work is live. For example, if the door is closed then this means they must keep the noise to a minimum. Having a well defined and separate workplace protects your personal time and provides a delineation between your personal/private time and your work time, despite being carried out from the same physical premises.

About the Noise:?

• The eGPU, external keyboard, external mouse, and poly 40 help with noise reduction.
• The agreement with the kids and the protocol in place for when the door is closed means that ,that the level of noise must be low.However as an emergency protocol, the kids can text me if there is something urgent to attend.
• I always mute background apps notifications, when presenting.
• I always set my default meeting settings to mute audio and camera off upon I joining a meeting to minimize any disruption.? I also make a point of putting myself on? mute when I’m not talking.? (Hence: The famous sentence - ‘Seth you are on mute” ).

About Unattended Computers: I immediately lock my computers before I leave and use an inactivity timer. The rule of thumb is work devices must be used only for work, it must not be used for personal reasons, again keep work and personal life separate.

About the Cameras:?

• The OBSBOT has helped me many times to keep my customers engaged as the camera follows me as I move around the office during my interactive white-boarding sessions.
• I tend not to use backgrounds in my conference application, as I generally keep my office space clean and minimalistic and given the office’s rules mentioned earlier I have the necessary privacy and convenience at all times.

About the Screen Sharing:?

• I rarely share full screens from my? work computer, and in case I have to, I share only the application. Therefore I do not expose unnecessary screens, as I usually have many windows open across my three monitors at all times.
• All the sharing is happening from iSteve,? where I load only the contents that are needed for that particular session and I stream the audio and the video from the work computer.? How do I do that? You may ask.It’s quite simple I join the meeting from iSteve and the work computer together, so I actually join as two different participants in the meeting, this can intrigue some people so I introduce iSteve :).
• I always keep my software up to date as per my organization's policy and security best practices . It signals good security hygiene.? Please do that as well, nothing hurts my feelings more than the red button says UPDATE:).

Conclusion

It is a mix of technology and habits that make my work from home much more fun, productive , and engaging for my customers and colleagues.. I do not have boring sessions, as i thoroughly enjoy talking with people everyday. I see it as a show that is intended to entertain and educate people.. Some might say it is an elaborate and expensive setup. However I have never encountered any negative comments, The feedback from a customer or colleague with regards to the effectiveness of the presentation has been great so far. For that reason alone? it makes? makes it worth the investment. My hope is that you draw some inspiration from my personal story and environment so that you can enhance your own environment and build something that works for you.?