Being Present
When talking about events on Zoom in which I have participated, I find myself telling people that I ‘attended’ or ‘went to’ or ‘was at’ such-and-such a conference or talk or meetup.
In other words, I tend to fall back on language that features verbs related to physically going to or being at an event, even when that event is digital and has not required me to physically stir from the comfort of my own home. All during Melbourne’s seven(!) long lockdowns during 2020 and 2021, and even now in 2022, I have ‘attended’ events while propped up in my bed and wearing my pyjamas.
In one way it’s not surprising that I am using the language of physical attendance: I assume it’s force of habit from notching up decades of face-to-face networking before Covid’s lockdowns sequestered us all onto various web-based platforms.
Not that I mind, actually. While I welcome the chance to bring in-person encounters back into the mix, I am also excited by the possibility that networking online brings. For me, the last couple of years super-charged the potential to explore new social territory, make new friends all over the world, and experience different content and ideas online. Events that had hitherto been held face-to-face and in locations that were too distant, and therefore too time-consuming or expensive, for me to get to were offered online. Subsequently my networks broadened and deepened, and I was able to incorporate or refine concepts that have refined and inspired my own creative and professional practices.
During this mad amount of online activity, I have been exposed to different ways of presenting online. Some presenters have been compelling and innovative; others astonishingly amateurish. I have also noticed the behaviours of people who ‘attend’. Some people have practiced a silent version of active listening, smiling, and nodding and head tilting into their computer’s camera while others glared, stunned-mullet style.
Last year on Twitter, I came across a brilliant thing: A recording of someone performing ‘academic-resting-face’ for scholars who were practicing presenting online. The person who made it makes the point that sometimes when people are concentrating, they can actually come across as severe or dubious or sceptical or bored whereas in reality they are just concentrating super-hard. I think I witnessed quite a few of these ‘resting faces’ online last year.
Which brings me back to those verbs of physical attendance I was talking about at the beginning of this blog. Yes, I use them out of force of habit. But I also think I have an instinct to use them because they are the language of presence-ing yourself, of ‘being’ at a certain time and place. And I think this notion of making oneself present – a live and dynamic presence rather than a lump of flesh plonked in front of a laptop – is important when it comes to participating online.
I have heard many people talk about how much they miss interacting with colleagues or other attendees face-to-face during lockdown, that working via Zoom or a similar tool is exhausting and distancing. This is true, and I don’t think that anything will replace the joy and immediacy of human interaction in real life. But I do wonder if part of the problem with Zoom is that we are not ‘present’ enough. Perhaps if, like the best online presenters and participants I have witnessed, we need to find ways to be more dynamic in front of our web cams. And as a proud card-carrying introvert let me hasten to say that by ‘dynamic’ I don’t mean competitively or exhaustively verbal. I mean present – attentive, aware of the impression we make even when we’re on mute and listening, aware of the gaze we direct into the web cam and the intention it conveys. Alert in body language.
Perhaps this is going a wee bit far…
It's an old cliché in film acting that you should treat the camera like another face. Perhaps the trick is to project some genuine human warmth into this other ‘face’ when we are online. Because it is other genuine human beings who will witness us doing it.
And if you need to turn off your Zoom camera because of low internet speeds or a bad hair day? Then use Zoom chat or emojis. A short thank you message or a thumbs up can let a presenter know that you were listening and did attend to what they were presenting.
Who knows where we will all end up working once the worst of the pandemic – and the accompanying need to physically distance ourselves - is behind us? Most of us will be looking forward to more human interactions, but many of us also do not want to return to the ‘old normal’ of long commutes to distracting open plan offices.
Truth be told, I find many of the articles or discussions on social media about working from home versus working from the office to be facile. Why are we focused on venues when we should be focused on culture, leadership, flexibility, inclusivity instead? I have no idea what conferences, or events, or networking, or working will look like in the future. But I do know that something has shifted in both practice and expectation. Can we not use this shift to reflect on the presence we bring to our online interactions?
