What a mess!

“What a bloody mess!”

"Look behind you!"

The verdict of my friend, helping with my first live practice using Teams to deliver online training! A dress rehearsal in other words but I wondered why he was turning it into panto season.

I was baffled, mortified!

·        The Power Points were excellent.

·        And I was suited and booted (top to bottom) – just as I dress in a training room.

·        Hair brushed -smiling white teeth.

·        Glass of water with lemon, tastefully displayed at my elbow

·        Small lectern for crib notes

All very professional.

What was the problem I asked him?

And right on cue, pantomime style, he said again “Look behind you!”

I did.

My smart desk in front of me with all the mod cons faced a backcloth of: -

·        Books all over the shelves, some balancing precariously over the edge.

·        A couple of brushes

·        Hair dryer and shaver dangling from above.

·        A bottle of “Just for Men” (do not ask)

·        A glass of red liquid -not cough mixture!

I saw his point(s) at once. And apparently the point has been made by commentators who have nothing better to do than watch other people’s screens that many who use Teams and Zoom are going out and buying expensive books they will never read, ornaments that are so today and other sundries. Just adorning their shelves to impress.

A sort of “Keeping up with the Joneses”. An idiom in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one's neighbour as a benchmark for social class or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority. The phrase originated in a comic strip of the same name created by Arthur R. "Pop" Momand in 1913. The strip ran until 1940 in The New York World. The strip depicts the social climbing of a family, who struggle to "keep up" with their neighbours, the Joneses of the title. The Joneses were unseen characters throughout the strip's run, often spoken of but never shown.

By analogy, these armchair critics say in the video-conferencing age, you win or lose according to your backdrop.

What was to be done with my arrangements? I was about to embark on a spring clean but then in our dress rehearsal my friend told me about a button on Teams. It changes your background. Suddenly my bedroom study and I were projected away into a whirlwind choice of a modern office block, a sunny beach and a room festooned with balloons and a dog. Not quite Toto, but I don’t think we are in Preston anymore I said to the cat!

But the menu of backcloth choices gives you time to stop fretting about when you can get your roots done and tidy your bookshelves. Marvellous.

On a more serious point and especially if you are delivering an online training course covering the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) remember that directly and indirectly with text and non-text data you must make sure that everything sensitive is hidden from view -not just the Gin Bottle!

Postscript

Apparently, a surprising number of lockdowns online video winners – and unexpected losers – is emerging. The Guardian reported that Meryl Streep nailed a pitch-perfect performance in a virtual staging of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company. In honour of the composer’s 90th birthday, Streep charmed everyone. It was not just her earrings (vintage-looking, fabulous), her martini (the classy choice for heavy drinking it seems) and her expensive bathrobe but the bookshelves behind, bare save for a wooden duck of the generic seaside-gift-shop variety – less an objet, more an afterthought. No Oscars. No colour-coded books. So relatable. A quarantined audience fell in love with Streep all over again.

Hmm I have most of those items to hand! Do you?