[nicbou]

This was an excellent writeup. There's only one thing I would add: put the camera closer to where people's faces are. It feels like you're looking directly at them, and it makes a big difference. I made a habit of looking directly into the camera now.

[FirstLvR]

the camera thing is really an issue in my company, we mostly work on software development so we share our screen constantly in our meetings... no one cares on turning on the camera and this has become regular behavior

the problem is that you dont know if the other people are actually paying attention and human interactions need that feedback

[riskable]

Honestly though, seeing people's faces/active backgrounds is super distracting. If I'm actually paying attention on a call I'm usually looking down off to the side of the screen so I can focus.

I recently setup a camera pointing down at my keyboard/mouse instead of my face for demonstrating a keyboard that I built (analog hall effect--from scratch!) and I think that's good enough to let people know, "I'm here" without being super distracting (assuming I turn off the LEDs and the gigantic LED matrix display haha).

[hammock]

Then they see you writing emails instead of listening?

[quadrifoliate]

> the problem is that you dont know if the other people are actually paying attention and human interactions need that feedback

This is going into the realm of the kind of monitoring software that tracks your eye movement to make sure you're concentrating.

If people are not paying attention to whatever you're presenting in your meeting, maybe the meeting is not relevant for those people. Consider cancelling it.

[tux1968]

There are devices you can buy for a few hundred that place the image of the person you're talking to directly in front of the camera. That way you can look at who you're talking to while also looking directly into the camera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nCYWhYagqk

There are also a lot of homebrew DIY versions of the same device:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AecAXinars

[vlmutolo]

Or, even better, position the camera far away and zoom in if the camera has an optical zoom. This gets rid of a ton of distortion in your face.